Thinking activity: Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Balleds

The “ Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” is an essay by William Wordsworth.

Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. Title of collection recalls rustic form of art. French revolution had deep influence on Romanticist and Wordsworth. Liberty- Equality- Fraternity are three watchword of the  French revolution and inspired Wordsworth and other romantic posts.

1) What’s the basic different between the Poetic creed of ' classicism' and 'Romanticism'?

Classicism and Romanticism- we can say that are two ideologies. As we all know that John Dryden, Alexander pope are classical poets, while William Wordsworth ,Keats, Coleridge, Shelly as we know the Romantic poets. Intellect is guiding source in classicism while In  Romanticism imagination is main source. Romantic poets believer of imagination. Classicist were restrained . They should be restrained while, romantics are different than classicist. Romantic poet believe that without any kind of restrictions we should be believe in freedom and liberty. We have right if liberty and freedom and play should be without restriction. They believe that poet  should be free in which manner they wanted to be wright. Classical poet represents urban life or city life in their poetry. They presents urban people and urban culture while romantic poets represents rustic life and rural people in their poetry.

 Romantics are subjective and classicist 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 men, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. Poet is reader of human Nature, he has knowledge about reader’s like and dislike. 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 his feeling and emotions. Through his/her imagination they can take away readers beyond this world. So Wordsworth says about characteristics of poet rather than who he is. Poet's ability and he describes quality of poet and he also makes poet different than other common people. So we can say that Wordsworth speaks about quality of poet so he says what is poet 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 words”. Poetic Diction means which type of linguistics style used in poem. Which type of language, tone, metaphors and languagualso vocabulary used in poetry. That we can say poetic diction. According to my point of view valuation of poetry depends on which type of diction use in poetry. Which types of words choose by poet to express his/her imagination or thinking. Through his or her particular language they differs than other poet. So I can say due to that poetic diction poet can be unique.
William Wordsworth in his preface he writes about lives of ordinary men and women, farmers, paupers and the rural people. He writes about rustic life than city life. He has used language really used by men.

4)what is poetry?

Wordsworth has given definition of poetry. According to him poetry is:
“ The breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science”.

Poet is as like teacher and through the lesson of poetry poet reaches us lesson for life. As Wordsworth said that poetry doesn’t simply delight us. It is said that Wordsworth has used simple diction and his poetry we can easily understand but when during our class discussion our professor shown us one poem by Wordsworth and said us that can you explain what he wanted to say? But, we couldn’t explain his poem that what he wanted to say. So due to this I can say that all poems by Wordsworth are not easily can understand. Meaning of poetry can be different through different people. It is depend on through which angle we see it or through which spectacle we see it.

5) Discuss “ Daffodils- I wandered lonely as a cloud” with reference to Wordsworth's poetic creed.

The Daffodils is a poem by Wordsworth. This poem contains four stanzas and we can see that and also said that first three stanzas are in past tense while fourth one is in present tense. As Wordsworth believe that the language of poem should be with vivid colouring imagination.
   As we know that Wordsworth wrote about nature in his poetry. His main theme of poetry is based on nature. In this poem Daffodils he described beautifulness of nature. If we observed by stanza and if we minutely observe it we can find or see that the tranquillity of recollection is happens. He has used figures like:

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