feb 6, 1800 - Preface to 'The Lyrical Ballads', Wordsworth

Description:

Seen as a manifesto for English Romanticism

The aim of poetry shuld be to convey the "essential passion of the heart" as simply and directly as possible, the poet being "a man speaking to men"
-it is among simple people, in rural life, that elementary feelings and passions are most forcefullly expressed
-W adopts the simple, "unelaborated" language of common men
-the poet is an ordinary man speaking to other men with "heightened sensibility", poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling"

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The influence and healing power of nature on man and the influence of memory on the present are the major themes of W's poetry. Nature helps man reach harmony, heightened consciousness and transcendental insight, for W's poetry is about the poet's subjectivity. The poet himself becomes the main subject of poetry

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