Wordsworth, William - Poetry (2)

Wordsworth and Coleridge produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. The second edition became the Manifesto of English Romanticism. In the Preface the subject of the poem is the life of every day, not heroes but ordinary people. According to this the truth of human reason is due to normal people. The language isn’t sophisticated, but it is an accessible language to all people. This will be a subjective poetry of the poet. The basic theme is the nature. Wordsworth believes in the goodness of nature as Rousseau. The child is better than mature man, because he preserved in whether a particular sensibility. The poet is a man among men. The poet can read the mystery of nature and give it to other people. Wordsworth has a pantheistic view and as Spinoza, he says that nature is God. For Wordsworth is important the ability of memory, to recollect the memories of childhood. Man’s personality comes from things pleasant and unpleasant of childhood, as the philosopher Hartley says. Wordsworth wants to see how the nature influence the phase of growth. The memory is common to all things. The poet has an imagination more developed, this is a creative forces able to create emotions with imagination. Wordsworth explains “an recollected in tranquility”, that is the poet must write in a quiet moment, with also the help of memories. The sequence is: object, poet, sensory experience, emotion, memory = recollected in tranquility, kindred emotion, poem, reader, emotion. He abandoned the heroic couplet and he used blank verse.