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Thinking activity: Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballad...



The "preface to the Lyrical Ballad" is an essay by William Wordsworth. Lyrical Ballad is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth &  Samuel Coleridge. Title of collection recalls rustic form of art. French revolution has deep influence on romanticist and Wordsworth. Liberty- equlity- fraternity are 3 watchword of the French revolution and inspired Wordsworth and other romantic poets.


1. What is the basic difference between the poetic creed of 'classicism' and 'roamnticism' ?


Classicism & Romanticism - we can say that there are 2 ideologies. As we all know that John Dryden , Alexander Pope & so on are classical poets., While William Wordsworth, Keats , Coleridge , P B Shelley are romantic poets. Intellect is a guiding source in classicism while in Romanticism imagination is a main source. Romantic poets are the believers of imagination. Classicists were restrained. They should be restrained while, romantics are different from classicist. Classical poets represents urban life and or city life in their poetry. They presents urban people and urban culture while romantic poet represents rustic and rural people & culture in their poetry.
Romantic poets are subjective & Classical poets are objective. Romantics are written about nature. They are believer of nature more than usual common poets.





2. Why does Wordsworth says "what is poet"? Rather than who is poet?

According to Wordsworth poet is a man ; speaking to man,  endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. Poet is a reader of human nature, he has knowledge about reader's likes & dislikes. Poet is not as like common people, he is different than other mankind. And he has more compressive soul. 
As Wordsworth said that Poet has great power to express hus feelings & emotions. 
Through his or her imagination they can take away readers beyond this world. 
So we can say that Wordsworth speaks about the quality of poet rather than who is poet. 


3. What is poetic diction ? Which sort of poetic diction is suggested by Wordsworth in his preface? 

According to Wordsworth - poetic diction means "choice of a word." 
Poetic diction means which type of linguistics style used in the poem. Which type of language, metaphor , meters used in poetry. That we can say thay poetic diction.
According to my point of view valuation of poetry depends on which type of diction use in poetry. Which type of word choose by poet to express his/ her imagination or thinking. Through his/her languages poets differs from each other. So I can say that due to that poetic diction poet can be unique.

4. What is poetry? 

Wordsworth has given definition of poetry.
According to him- poetry is
" The breath &finner spirit of all knowledge, the impressioned expression that is in the countenance of all science."


Poet is as like teacher & through the lesson of poetry poet reaches us lesson for life. As Wordsworth said that poetry doesn't simply delight us.

5. Discuss "Daffodils - I wandered lonely as a cloud." With reference to Wordsworth's poetic creed.

"The Daffodils" is a poem by William Wordsworth. This poem consists 4 stanzas & we can see and also says that first 3 stanzas are in the past tense while 4th one is in the present tense.
As we all know that Wordsworth wrotes about nature in his poetry. His main theme of poetry based on nature. In this poem "Daffodils" he described beauty of the nature. If we observed by stanza & if we minutely observe it.., we can find or see that the tranquillity of recollection is happens.
He has used figures like :

Could, vales, hills, lake, trees, breeze, stars, Milky way...etc..  and through that he has described beauty of nature and we can see  that this small poem very well written and worksout of Wordsworth's definition of poetry.

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