Lyrical Ballads

 Romantic Poetry- Lyrical Ballads

This blog is in response to the blog task based on the romantic poems given by Yesha ma'am. In this blog task I am going to present my views on lyrical Ballads. I have also attached my presentation to it.

In brief about Romantic period:

The period of romantic age was 1788 to 1837. This age started with the publication of lyrical Ballads. Writers of this age made an experiment to write romance for nature in their poetry.

Romanticism, It was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. Romantic age started with the poet's S.T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth and William Blake and in its second generations Keats, Shelley and Byron were notable poets. It can be interpreted as the reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

This age is known as the second creative age of English literature.

Characteristics of romanticism:

• An emphasis on individualism and subjectivity.
• An emphasis on beauty and purity of nature.
• Focuses on emotions and feelings.
• Belief in the natural goodness of man.
• Belief that imagination is superior to reason.
• Love for the supernatural.

This age is also known as the age of revolution as the three revolutions, Anglo Saxon period of freedom, American Commonwealth and French Revolution were going on altogether.

Edward Hirsch wrote in his treatise on how to read a poem-

“True poetic practice implies a mind so miraculously attuned and illuminated that it can form words, by a chain of more-than coincidences, into a living entity,”

Lyrical Ballads:

Ballads is a poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas. Traditional ballads are typically of unknown authorship, having been passed on orally from one generation to the next.

Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs".Ballads are often 13 lines with an ABAB BCBC form, consisting of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Another common form is ABAB or ABCB repeated, in alternating eight and six syllable lines. Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic Movement from the later 18th century.

Lyrical ballads were published in four different editions. Lyrical Ballads was the collaborative work of S.T. Coleridge.

Edition 1:

Its first edition was published anonymously. It consisted of 23 poems, 19 written by William Wordsworth and 4 written by Samuel Coleridge. Wordsworth in his poems gave emphasis on 'nature' While Coleridge emphasized on 'Supernatural elements'. In the same edition, Wordsworth presented Advertisement, which stated that the poems written are in the form of experiment. And also declared that the conversational language can be used greatly for the purpose of poetic creation.

To read original lyrical ballads and the advertisement.

Edition 2:

The second edition of the lyrical Ballads came with the Preface. The preface covered the points like what is poetry? Characteristics of poets and The value of Poem. 

It gave a definition of the poem- 'Spontaneous Overflow of powerful feeling, recollected in tranquility.’ Along with this preface also included other eight points which are described in the presentation below.

Edition 3:

Edition three, it expanded the preface and added poetic diction. ‘Poetic diction is used to denote linguistic style, the vocabulary and technique used in writing poems.’ Edition four is expandation of the previous edition. We don't find anything extraordinary in this edition.

'William Wordsworth believed that every poet has the Social responsibility of strengthening and promoting human culture through his poetry.'

William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge worked together in Lyrical Ballads, still Coleridge has criticised Wordsworth point of Poetic diction in his critical work ‘Biographia Literaria'. This point is described in my presentation.

Lyrical ballad from Jheel Barad

Thanks for visiting. For any queries or needed changes please drop a comment. I hope it was useful for you.

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