Question- Give a critical estimate of Wordsworth's 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads'.

Or
Briefly discuss the importance of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads'.
Or
Show that the 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads' is a place for simplify in theme and treatment.
Or
Discuss how The Preface of Lyrical Ballads' marks an important transition in English poetry.
Or
The Preface is a manifesto of the Romantic movement. Discuss.
Or
Write an essay on the importance of the Preface.
Or
Show how Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads', laid the foundation of Romantic Criticism.

Answer -

The preface is an unofficial manifest of the English romantic movement. It explains the aims and objectives of romanticism. It gave to the romantic movement a definite direction and programme. "It raised a wall between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It dated a new era. It served to make intelligible forever the dividing line between the two regions in criticism that might otherwise have seemed to flow into one another. We do not often have many such dividing walls."

"The preface' is a great irritant to thought. It poses numerous questions and provoke discussion. It is probably the most important single document in the history of English criticism. In it Wordsworth covers an enormous stretch of ground, throwing out quite effortlessly the most acute observations. On the relationship of poetry and science, on the use of metre, on the place of pleasure, in art, on Aristotle, on taste and its cultivation and on the history of poetry. It raises, in fact, almost every knotty aesthetic problem one can think of, and deals with it with an amazing confidence and energy. After reading it, one is quite convinced that Wordsworth, at least, had thought long and deeply, and that as he says at the out set, 'indolence, is the last thing he could possibly be accused of. 'It is a pleasure to read someone who is so sure of his own mind, and who at the same time has nothing dry or opinionated about him The preface' leaves a final impression of a quite extraordinary combination of creative and critical power, of passion and thought. It cannot be read too often, every time it seems to contain something new and unexpected. It marks the beginning of a new age.'

Wordsworth wrote the preface in order to explain the aims and objectives he had before him while composing. He wanted to emphasize the novel features of his poems. He wrote the preface to point out the true nature and function of poetry. His aim in writing the Preface was not to build up any systematic theory of poetry or make any elaborate defence, but to correct and educate the public taste so that his poems may be property appreciated. The preface' is the most authoritative exposition of Wordsworth's poetic creed. We find that the essence of it lies not in his polemic against poetic diction but in his conception of the origin, nature and purpose of poetry and the function of the poet in a civil society, 'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' - that is his fundamental position modern critics have assailed it with scorn, poetry, they tell us, is an art, a dumping ground for emotion. The poet's feelings do not 'discharge' themselves in this way. The poet, as a poet, does not react to an impression immediately. He allows it to sink into his mind along with the feelings which it has excited, there it remains till its accidental ingredients have been precipitated, and what is left in its ideal, or essential truth. When later, the impression, thus purged of accdients is recalled, the original feeling similarly, purged receives with it. He does not mean that the poet remembers in cold blood an experience which had moved him in the past. No, in the poet's mind the emotion which accompanied the original impression revives when the impression is recalled the ability thus to re construct an emotion belongs to an eminent degree to the poet, being in fact a portion of his native endowment his 'more than usual organic sensibility.' As he writes, the poet lives through the whole experience again in an idealized form, and the reader of poetry in turn, so far as he may, lives through this secondary experience of the poet's as he reads."

"The preface' provides a vigorous expression to Wordsworth's view on the nature and function of poetry, and the nature of a poet. In it he speaks of poetry 'both as spontaneous overflow of powerful passion and also 'emotion recollected in tranquillity. He says that poetry is a matter of the heart and not of the mind. It is not an intellectual process. The creation takes place through four clearly marked stages the perception of object produces powerful emotions. Then there is the recollection of that emotion intranquillity. Then there is setting up or revival of the original emotion. There is an overpens of pleasure. Then there is the communication of this pleasure to the readers. The poet uses metre as metre adds to the pleasure. Wordsworth closely followed his theory in practice. Poetry must give pleasure but it has other ends as well. It must also serve the purpose of life and morality. It must make men nobler and better. The poet should prefer subjects taken from the humble and rustic life. He must throw a certain clowing of imagination. The poet has greater organic sensibility than others. The diction of poetry must also be simple. It sould be a selection of language, really used by men.

No part of "The preface' to the Lyrical Ballads' has been more generally criticised than that in which Wordsworth affirms that the language of poetry is 'a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation.' The criticism begins with the 'Biographic Literaria'. Coleridge seizing upon what is said of 'selection', exclaims at once that a language which has submitted to this selective process will, in the result not differ from the language of any other man of common sense, Hazlitt said that Coleridge had reduced the merit of Wordsworth to this, 'that there is nothing peculiar about him, and that his poetry, so far as it is good for anything at all, is just like any other good poetry. Wordsworth has a perfectly good answer. The poet who composes in a selection, from the real language men 'escapes', the language of any other man of commonsense; in the exact degree in which he is a poet. What Wordsworth says of 'selection' is not a timorous qualification, but a sly after though but something essential, not merely to his theory of poetic diction, but to his whole teaching-verse and prose-upon the subject of imaginative creation. The language of poetry must be real, a true and not a false language but by the same necessity it must be, and will be, not the language of common sense, but so much the real language of men as will make up into imagination. Just as poetry cannot work upon the objects offered to it by sense so it cannot work with the language of common sense, the language offered to it by real life. The language of poetry, like the stuff of poetry comes from the imagination. The imagination operates freely, whether upon the visualized objects which are its material, or upon the language which is its principle instrument, only after there has already operated a selecting faculty. The language of poetry is to the language really spoken by men, exactly as the objects which the imagination visualises are to their co-relates in the sphere of sense. In both classes the imagination renders back purified and dignified what comes to it, through eye and ear confused and ignoble.'

In his 'preface' some of the statesments are even more downright. He is proud of having uttered "little of what is usually called poetic diction.' His purpose has been to imitate, and as far as possible, to adopt the very language to men." He asserts, 'that there neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition. "His objection to poetic diction is that it is not true to nature-either to external nature or to human nature in its responses to the external. I have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject, consequently, I hope that there is in these poems little falsehood of description, and that my ideas are expressed honest expressions can become bad poetry just by being repeated.' I have abstained from the use of many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but which have been foolishly repeated by bad poets, till such feelings of disgust are connected with them, as it is scarcely possible by any art of association to overpower."

Whimsatt and Brooks Wordsworth's 'Preface to The Lyrical Ballads' marks a radical departure from the classical tradition. It proved to be a landmark in the history of English literature, though it was not recognised as such at the time of publication. Wordsworth emunciates his theory of poetry in it."

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