Principles stated in the Preface:
Poetry should deal with everyday situations and incidents with ordinary people,
especially rural people.
The language should be simple, objects homely and called with their ordinary names.
Man and
nature are inseparable, man exists as an active participant in the natural
world, so Nature for Wordsworth includes inanimate and human nature, each a
part of the same whole. Nature is a confort to man in sorrow, a source of
pleasure an joy, it teaches to love and to act in a moral way, it is the seat
of the spirit of the universe.
Memory is a major element in the process of growth of
the poet’s mind and moral character, memory allows us to give poetry its life
and power.
Genuine
real poetry originates from “emotion recollected in
tranquillity” through the recreative power of memory. The poet’s task is that
of a teacher showing men how to understand their feelings and improve their
moral being. He draws attention to the ordinary things of life, to the humble
people, where the deepest emotions and truths are to be found
The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is a
manifest : it uses
- Rhetorical questions
- Comparatives in order to show a better approach
- Repetition of the conjunction because
- Repetition to elaborate earlier statements : “incidents and situations”, “language”
The speaker is inside the
text.
Nature, Man and poetry are
interrelated: Man and Nature are closely connected, nature has permanence in
itself, it inspires simple spontaneous passions and elementary feelings. The
poet should aspire to such essentiality free from social conventions.
