Lyrical Ballads - Definition of Literary Term

A long step forward in the history of romanticism was taken with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads
in 1798 jointly by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was not a conscious
movement at all. It was now for the first time that the two friends: William Wordsworth and S.T.
Coleridge emphasized the aims and objectives of the new poetry. - See more at:
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Coleridge pointed out that he would treat of objects and incidents supernatural, but in such a way as
to make them look real and convincing. Wordsworth on the other hand, was to deal with subjects
taken from ordinary and commonplace life, but so as to cast over them by the magic power of his
imagination the charm of novelty. Coleridge would make the unfamiliar, look familiar, and Wordsworth
would make the familiar look unfamiliar. In this way he enunciated the theory and methods of the new
poetry, gave a new consciousness and purpose to the movement, and thus opened a new chapter in
the history of English Romanticism.
The publication of the Lyrical Ballads heralded the dawn of Romanticism in English poetry of the
neo-classical age. The first edition of the Lyrical Ballads consisted of twenty three poems. In the
preface, poetry was defined as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, arising from
emotion recollected in tranquillity. The preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads was also
prime importance as a manifesto of literary romantic. Here, the two poets affirmed the importance of
feeling and imagination of poetic creation and disclaimed conventional literary forms and subjects.
Thus, as romantic literature everywhere developed, imagination was praised over reason, emotions
over logic, and intuition over science- making way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and
passion. The literature emphasized a new flexibility of form adapted to varying content, encouraged
the development of complex and fast moving plots, and allowed mixed genres like tragicomedy, the
mingling of the grotesque, the sublime, and freer style. Much of Wordsworths easy flow of
conversational blank verse has the true lyrical power and grace, and his finest work is permeated by
a sense of the human relationship to external nature that is religious in its scope and intensity. To
Wordsworth, God was everywhere manifest in the harmony of nature and he felt deeply the kinship
between nature and the soul of humankind.
Wordsworth stated that the language of poetry should be a selection of language really used by
men: there neither is nor can be a any essential difference between the language of prose and the
metrical composition. But he followed his theory of poetic diction only in some of his poems and
violated it when he composed such splendid poems as Tintern Abbey and Ode on the intimations

of Immorality. Wordsworth differs from all other poets in the stress he puts upon the moral influence
of nature. For Wordsworth, Nature is endowed with personality- the mighty Being. He teaches us
that between man and nature, there is mutual consciousness and mystic relationship. It is in the
power of Nature to penetrate the mans spirit, to reveal him to himself, to communicate to him divine
instructions, to live him into spiritual life and ecstasy. Wordsworth thinks of nature as a mighty
presence, before which he stands silent, like a faithful high priest, who waits in solemn expectation
for the whisper of enlightenment and wisdom. Two things stand out prominent in Wordsworth in
connection with nature: 1. its spiritual life and its ethical influence and 2. the influence nature exerts
as a moral teacher on man.
Coleridge was a major influence upon Wordsworth. He shared so much of Coleridges earlier ideas
about the nature of the mind and imagination, through Coleridge developed very much theoretical
psychological concepts after his stay and study in Germany. Wordsworth remained a pantheist, a
believer in the universal mind from which an individual mind comes, while Coleridge became more
interested in a theory of the imagination that suggests that the power of one image or feeling serves
to modify many others; this in turn suggests that thoughts arise in the mind under a stimulus.
According to Coleridge all ideas originate from sensation or reflection, and if objects of sensation are
one source of ideas, the operation of the mind itself is the other source.

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