Analysis of William Wordsworth's Preface to The Lyrical Ballads

<p>Central to the creative process of the Romantic poets that followed him Wordsworth's <i>Preface to the Lyrical Ballads </i>has been both a gift and a thorn in the side of critics for over a century. Readers find themselves drawn back to the essay repeatedly as they seek to untangle the ideas and contradictions within it. <em>The Preface </em>is a statement of Wordsworth's poetic vision and offers an explanation of the poetic process behind the poems which fused the rusticity of the ballad form with the psychological introspection of modernity. </p> <p>But to the generation of Romantic writers that emerged in its wake the Preface announced a new understanding of the creative process and of the high purposes of poetry: to reveal the human condition and to awaken in its readers the profoundest emotions and the most enduring truths of existence.</p>