English Literature / Unit 12 ENL 1118 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Captions available
The idea
Wordsworth's Preface to the eighteen hundred edition, called the manifesto of Romanticism, chose incidents from common life, related in a selection of the language really used by men, coloured by imagination so ordinary things appear unusual. It rejected the artificial poetic diction of the past.
In practice
Common life, real language.
Where people slip
The Preface attacks eighteenth-century diction.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for English Literature