Literature I
Literature I
Study Questions on "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"
1. How does Wordsworth describe the language he claims to have selected for his poems? How does he describe the language used by "many modern writers"?
2. What sorts of "incidents and situations" does Wordsworth claim to have chosen for his poems? How does he believe such incidents can be made interesting? Why does he choose situations from "humble and rustic life"? What is the presumed state of the "essential passions of the heart" in that condition? What is the relationship of these passions to language? To the "forms of nature"?
3. What, according to Wordsworth, is the relationship in his poems between feeling and action?
4. According to Wordsworth, "one being is elevated above another in proportion as he possesses" what capability?
5. What are some of the causes, "unknown to former times," combining to reduce men's minds "to a state of almost savage torpor"?
6. What does Wordsworth think of the distinction between the language of prose and metrical composition? Why?
7. What are some of the characteristics of the poet? What is his relationship to his "own passions and volitions"? What is the relationship between his feelings and the "goings-on of the Universe"?
8. What sort of truth does poetry give? How is this truth communicated? To what tribunal does it appeal?
9. Of what is poetry the image? Under what one restriction does a poet write? What sort of information may he expect his reader to possess?
10. What sort of song does the poet sing? What is his metaphorical relationship to human nature? What does he do for the "vast empire of human society"? Why, according to Wordsworth, can't the scientist do the same?
11. How is the poet "chiefly distinguished from other men"? What characterizes his "passions and thoughts and feelings"? With what are they connected?
12. What, according to Wordsworth, is the "great spring of the activity of our minds"?
13. Poetry is defined by Wordsworth as a spontaneous what? From what does poetry take its origin? Then what happens? In what mood is "successful composition" carried on?
14. Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" may be read as a treatise that displaces the French Revolution's three main ideals (liberty, equality, fraternity) into a theory about the way in which poetry is composed and the effects it ought to have. What, then, are the "Preface's" theoretical equivalents to liberty, equality, and fraternity (i.e. brotherhood)?
(That is Wordsworth in the picture/drawing)
Lesson for Thursday October 25th, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012