![]() ![]() The poets of this age have attempted to break from Neoclassicism, but their poetry displays an unforgivable insensitivity and sensationalism. ![]() ![]() Wordsworth sees great harm in the poetry of the Age of Johnson. Through his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth argues that it’s time for a new kind of poetry-one that can revive humankind to be emotionally alive and morally sensitive-which he hopes to catalyze with his own ballads. Wordsworth proposes something more revolutionary in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”: emotion and imagination over intellectualism, nature over society, simple forms of expression, and the stylistic liberty of the poet. In this last stage, writers attempted to break from the classical tradition through gestures like incorporating nature and melancholy, but were, in Wordsworth’s eyes, unsuccessful. The last stage of Neoclassicism, before the onset of Romanticism, is known as the Age of Johnson. The Neoclassical poets emphasized intellectualism over emotion, society, didacticism, formality, and stylistic rigidity. Wordsworth uses this essay to declare the tenets of Romantic poetry, which has distinctly different preoccupations from the Neoclassical poetry of the preceding period. The “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” is, at its core, a manifesto of the Romantic movement. ![]()
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