Wordsworth’s Definition of Poet and Poetry

Name: Trivedi Hezal K.

Roll No: 39

PG Reg. No. PG15101040

M.A. – English Regular, Semester-1

Year: 2015

Course No. 3: Literary Theory & Criticism: Western – 1:

Unit-3: Preface: Wordsworth

Assignments Topic - Wordsworth’s Definition of Poet and Poetry

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English 

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

(Gujarat – India)

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Introduction

William Wordsworth was born on 7, April, 1770 in cokermouth, a town on the edge of the Cumberland into a lawyer's family. He studied at Cambridge and completed his graduation there. He was a leader of the Romantic Movement in England. Wordsworth was a major English romantic poet but not a critic. However his views on poetry are extremely important and can be found in the preface to the lyrical ballad 1802.  He is the most representative poet of English literature. Wordsworth has written a series of poem collaboration of Coleridge entitled "Lyrical Ballad". He gave definition of 'poet' and 'poetry' in his "Lyrical Ballad".  His first two collection of poetry would be published in 1793, five years after his first published poem. By the time of his death in 1850 he had produced some of   English poetry's greatest work and influenced by future generation of poets.

Wordsworth’s Definition of Poet and Poetry as Expressed in his Preface Lyrical Ballads

‘Lyrical Ballads’ is a collection of poems generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. The Lyrical Ballads was a manifesto for a radically new approach to the writing of poetry. Wordsworth declared that the most important thing in poetry was the poet's ability to record his spontaneous feelings. Poetry, he said, was "emotion recollected in tranquility".

Definition of poetry:

All good poetry is the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" and thought this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subject but by a man who being  possessed of more than usual organic sensibility ,but also thought long and deeply.

As 'Poetry' is the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquillity". In this definition of poetry there are two apparent contradictions. The “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “emotion reflected in tranquillity” on the other side are apparently two contradictory statements.  

Wordsworth uses his poetry to look at the relationship between nature and human life. For him poetry is the talk of man to man and it should be in simple language. His experience and attitude are reflected not only in his poetry, but also in letters and prose work. Wordsworth’s poetry remained consistent throughout. Even the language and imagery he used to embody those themes remained remarkably consistent. They remained consistent to the canons Wordsworth had set out the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Function of poetry:

According to Wordsworth, 'poetry' 'is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science'. Poetry seeks to ennoble and edify. It is like morning star which throws its radiance through the gloom and darkness of life.

'Poetry' is the instrument for the propagation of moral thoughts.

‘Poetry sheds no tears, such as angels weep, but natural and human tears’.

Definition of poet:

According to Wordsworth, "A poet is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility" and he also say that the poet is such a human being who is overall in degree a far better human being than ordinary human being.

In other words..

• He has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than one supposed to be common among mankind.

• He is a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the going-on of the universe, and habitually compelled to create them where he does not find them.

• Man speaking to men.

• More lively sensibility.

• Greater imagination. (―affected by absent things as if they were present‖)

• Greater zest for life.

• Greater power of expression and communication

 

Poetry and Poet:  a tiny video

Foremost Poems by Wordsworth:

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Also known as “Daffodils"

  

“The Rainbow”

 

 

Conclusion:

We can say that he was a poet of simplicity of both human life as well as nature and his poetry has too simplicity of nature and human life and it often puzzle to reader. And though his language and subject are simple but they are deeply philosophical. Thus Wordsworth elaborately describes the function of poetry and of the poet in his critical essay preface to lyrical ballads. In both the cases he avoids classical tendencies and adopts romantic and nature loving attitude.

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