Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Typifying the ideals of the Romantic movement, Wordsworth argues that poetry should be understood by the common person and should use everyday language. This is in contrast to the poetic style cultivated by 18th-century classicist poets like Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray, which strove for loftiness of effect and often employed a special “poetic” vocabulary not used in ordinary conversation. Further, Wordsworth argues in favor of choosing as the subjects of poetry “incidents and situations from common life” (2). His rationale is that poetry expresses human emotions—unlike science, which seeks a more abstract and impersonal truth—and thus should remain close to human feelings, concerns, and modes of expression.

Wordsworth’s emphasis on bringing poetry to the level of the common person reflects the democratic ideals of the Romantic movement, inspired in part by the American and French Revolutions. Romanticist artists advocated the idea that art should appeal to the many instead of being the province of an intellectual or aristocratic elite—who were the traditional patrons of art from the Renaissance through the 18th century. Not only were common people the proper audience for poetry, but they could also be a worthy subject for poetry because they lived (in many cases) close to