William Wordsworth’s Theoretical Contribution to Canon of Literary Criticism in Light of Preface to Lyrical Ballads

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doi:10.47577/tssj.v8i1.590

Abstract

Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) is both a revolutionary manifesto and a kind of foundational text in the context of the canon of Romantic poetry because of its normative analysis on the nature of poetry and its basic constituent parts although when compared to the systematic approaches in the twentieth century literary theory, Wordsworth does not present an autonomous critical method capable of providing universally valid principles in evaluation of the text. This paper mainly aims to discuss Wordsworth’s contribution to canon of literary criticism on the theoretical level by giving concrete examples from Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) as well as scrutinizing Wordsworth’s definition of poetry and the poet, his ideas on the origin of poetry, the subject matter of poetry, and the language of poetry respectively in order to show that it is revolutionary in terms of prescribing some principles in evaluation of a literary work.

Highlights

Abrams (1999) states that Wordsworth’s preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads was Technium Social Sciences Journal Vol [8, 664-669], June 2020 ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com written “as a poetic ‘manifesto,’ or statement of revolutionary aims, in which he denounced the upper-class subjects and the poetic diction of the preceding century” (p. 177) because it “proposed to deal with materials from ‘common life’ in ‘a selection of language really used by men’” (Abrams, 1999, p. 177). The influence of this literary manifesto remains insufficiently low in terms of being a revolutionary text leading to political upheavals. It does not cause removal of the established political order but it brings a new understanding in evaluation of the text; it is likely to classify Wordsworth as an avant-gardist in literary criticism owing to his relatively author-oriented approach developed in corporation with Coleridge
This paper mainly aims to discuss Wordsworth’s contribution to canon of literary criticism on the theoretical level by giving concrete examples from Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) as well as scrutinizing Wordsworth’s definition of poetry and the poet, his ideas on the origin of poetry, the subject matter of poetry, and the language of poetry respectively in order to show that this literary manifesto does not pave the way for a radical change in the standards of political institutions, it is revolutionary in terms of prescribing some principles in evaluation of a literary work
Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads is a milestone in the history of literary criticism due to many reasons but the most fundamental one is his systematic approach to poetry while defining the basic principles of Romantic poetry against the existing paradigm of his time

Summary

Introduction

Technium Social Sciences Journal Vol [8, 664-669], June 2020 ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com written “as a poetic ‘manifesto,’ or statement of revolutionary aims, in which he denounced the upper-class subjects and the poetic diction of the preceding century” (p. 177) because it “proposed to deal with materials from ‘common life’ in ‘a selection of language really used by men’” (Abrams, 1999, p. 177). This paper mainly aims to discuss Wordsworth’s contribution to canon of literary criticism on the theoretical level by giving concrete examples from Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) as well as scrutinizing Wordsworth’s definition of poetry and the poet, his ideas on the origin of poetry, the subject matter of poetry, and the language of poetry respectively in order to show that this literary manifesto does not pave the way for a radical change in the standards of political institutions, it is revolutionary in terms of prescribing some principles in evaluation of a literary work.

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