Preface to Lyrical Ballads: as an epitome romantic menifesto

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. Lyrical Ballads was written jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge: the two poets agreed to divide the task of composing the volume. Wordsworth wrote about common events in simple languages and Coleridge wrote about exotic or fantastic nature.

The preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered the English Romantic Manifesto, for in it all the major ideas of Wordsworth are described and explained: the choice of ordinary subjects and ordinary language for creating an accessible poetry for all man; the theory of the poet as man that is more affected by what he experiences and is able to communicate his experiences to other men; and how poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings originating from emotion recollected in tranquility. Most of Lyrical Ballads deal with the nature that can mean several things, such as, nature as the countryside, nature as a source of inspiration, and nature as a life-force. He substitutes the great epics of the past with shorter epic tales of simple country folk. The country person for Wordsworth can teach lessons that the wisest philosopher cannot.

To a great extent, I believe that the Preface to Lyrical Ballads does operate as a type of manifesto, or declaration, as to the purpose of Romanticism.  Wordsworth understood clearly that the poetic experiment upon which he and Coleridge were embarking was radical and fundamentally different from anything else.  It made sense to him that the Preface not only works as an understanding of the poems featured in Lyrical Ballads, but also talk about the purpose of Romantic inquiry in poetry.  The manifesto element is present in how the Preface talks about the nature of Romantic poetry, and declares how poetry, itself, is a kind of experiment in which the emotion takes precedence over structure and form.  The fact that Wordsworth devotes himself so much to talking about the purpose of poetry in the preface lends further credence to the idea that this is a manifesto, a declaration. The analysis and emphasis on how poetry operates on art seems to be speaking more than what Wordsworth features in the collection of poems, but rather towards a new way of thinking and envisioning what poetry can be.

It is here where I think that the Preface can be viewed as a manifesto of the Romantic movement.