How does Wordsworth portray real people in The Lyrical Ballads? Essay

Lyrical Ballads, and in particular the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, is considered a central constitute of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the ele ments of a new type of meter, one base on the real oral communication of men and the work itself avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry, whose most noteworthy exponent was John Milton in Paradise Lost, which benefitted from drastic overuse of verbose Latinate vocabulary. He matte up this wasnt an accurate reflection of real people, and sought to portray them through using language which they used. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth famously described poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility, and wrote to justify in theoretical terms his practice of writing a new and experimental poetry, one whose language is fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation .He rejected the Miltonic approach to poetry, and rather favoured much more than Anglo-Saxon words, for their gritty implications appropriate for a publication in which most of the poems are focused nearly everyday people and situations. Unsurprisingly, these are very pastoral poems, many of which solely include narrative. Although this may attend mundane for such a famous poet, this was Wordsworths statement of protest against the style of the meter, and his digression instead led to a new style of poetry in which living language is valued highly, as it allows a sense of man speaking to man, and is a more accessible style of poetry than his predecessors.In Michael, a poem about a father and son who form an eternal beat (Michael, an eighty-year experienced shepherd, and Luke, his son), Wordsworth portrays the relationship between the two. The first indication we receive of the tight-knit paternal bond is the use of language when describing Michaels care for Luke. On two occ asions, Michaels affection is emphasised by using in particular matriarchal language Michael had done him Luke female service and female hand . Wordsworth tries to convey the strength of the bond between the two in an ordinary working family a clear diversion from the traditional poetry of the time. Michael is evidently a plain, hard-working, message and fulfilled man, but the land he has worked and continued on has to be change on when his br another(prenominal) defaults on a loan that Michael had guaranteed. From line 236 ( Isabel, said he, ), Wordsworth uses dialogue for the first time to instill the sense of a soliloquy in the poem.Michael speaks with a Shakespearean dignity he is more upset that he is soon to lose his land, and his family exit be affected, than that his brother has betrayed him. The nature of the poem itself is something which concentrates itself well-nigh the ostensibly ordinary it is, by definition, a pastoral poem. It describes the life of a shepherd a nd his family, but rase this varies from the traditional meaning of the word, as the country scene is far from idyllic. After hearing that his land will have to be sold, and sending off his son in order to make enough silver for the family to still be comfortable, Michael goes about constructing a sheepfold, of which Luke lays the cornerstone.This is, again, a seemingly unimportant detail, especially given the content of contemporary poetry, but in the context of a shepherds life, this is more than a clear detail, and within the context of the poem, it is critical. Firstly, it provides us with possibly the best example of typically Wordsworthian language in the whole poem the building materials are described as a Straggling heap of unhewn stones, a phrase which exemplifies the fricative consonants and drawn-out vowels of inherently Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. The pile of stones is also crucial to the poem as it signifies the transient impermanence and brevity of life, which leads us into thinking of Michaels life he has worked for 70 long time for everything he owns, and it is to be taken from him in a relative instant.The sheepfold itself is never finished, as Michael learns that Luke has become a criminal and must flee beyond the seas every day for the rest of his life, Michael goes to bemoan the death of his son at the pile of stones, and, seven years later, he dies. The poems frank purpose is to support his notion that a pastoral life is pure, moral, and happy. Wordsworth believed that living close to nature, living an uncomplicated, phantasmal life devoted to honest labor was the ideal. His narrative suggests that if Luke had remained in the natural valley with his parents and continued to live the pastoral life, he would have retained his moral character and would have later saved his parents from years of grief.Although Michael is the prime example of Wordsworths portrayal of real people in The Lyrical Ballads, several other poems display his wish t o convey the lives of real people through techniques such as language and fleck situations.