Lyrical Ballads and Wordsworth's Preface: A Detailed Analysis

This essay analyzes Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads, focusing on the significance of meter and rhyme in poetry. It explores how Wordsworth viewed the role of the poet, the use of plain diction, and the impact of metrical patterns on the reader's experience. The essay examines the role of meter in providing a pleasurable and tempering effect on the emotional content of the poems, as well as its use in creating a distancing effect, especially when dealing with painful or pathetic situations. The essay also references the importance of meter in conveying the poet's skill and the challenges in poetic creation. The essay is supported by references to the relevant literature.

Running Head : LYRICAL BALLADS
Lyrical Ballads
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

2LYRICAL BALLADS
Topic- According to Wordsworth in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, what is the main positive
effect that the use of meter (and rhyme) has on poetry?
The metrical patterns and the rhyme are commonly used in poetry along with in the
infant-directed speech, the rites, the plays and the celebrations. The utilization of various poetical
features of the languages can easily be traced back to 1000 years. It is supposed to predate all of
the written records of the human languages. It is found that the regular metrical patterns are quite
spurned in the western poetry through different authors of twentieth century. In the recent year,
the regular meter in the form of the stylistic characteristic has been resurfaced in the cutting-edge
poetry particularly (Leask).
The ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads’ is considered as the manifesto of the Romantic
Movement and the objective of Wordsworth were to adopt a plain diction in the poems. In the
text of William Wordsworth, the role of the poet and the poetry’ subject matter has been turned
out to be of various justifications. It is a bit weak having judged all other poles where the
justification of the metre comes chiefly to the points. According to Wordsworth, metre is
pleasure that is ‘superadded’ and has given the expression to the feelings and the emotions along
with the recollections that are rustic.
For him, the aim of poetry is to have produced a state of the emotional excitement which
could use a little tempering effect along with the metre restraint. Metre is also indispensable
when a poet tries to pen down few painful and pathetic situations (Rathiga). It provides a
distancing effect to the entire piece and then imparts to it a dreamlike quality. Moreover, the
application of the metre makes the reader to sense the poet’ skill in terms of overcoming the
difficulties in the way of poetic creation which provides pleasure in one particular way.

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Reference
Leask, Nigel. "Pantisocracy and the Politics of the ‘Preface’to Lyrical Ballads." Reflections of
Revolution. Routledge, 2016. 39-58.
Rathiga, K. "Heartwarming Trials in Translating Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads: A
Linguistic Loom." Language in India 18.5 (2018).