ENGL 3690 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: English Poetry, Torpor
15 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Lyrical ballads was a book co-written by coleridge and wordsworth, one of the most influential books of poetry ever. English poetry wholly changes after the publication of this book. Wordsworth therefore felt pressured into writing a preface for the second edition. This was a book designed to change the nature poetry is read, written, and discussed. He states that the language he uses is different than language seen in the poetry of the time (ex. Pope, dryden, perhaps even shakespeare) by saying his language was not elevated - it was of normal people, used on a daily basis. Trying to say that the language of real men is more interesting than the language that such poetry uses. Wordsworth is positing that common people, because of the life the live, have a closer relationship with the world of nature - therefore what poetry should do is use this same type of language.
