The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men… (“Preface” 96-97) Rather than waxing poetic in the lofty, allusory style of his day, Wordsworth tries to engage with the life of the common man: It is here that Wordsworth sets out to theorize the nature of the poetic experiment he had undertaken, which differed drastically from the poetry of his time, both in form and content. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a text written for the collection’s more widely read second printing, Wordsworth begins to explore questions about the ontology of poetry and the complex, shifting relationships between poet, poetic language, and the public that were raised by the first edition (“Preface” 103). I argue that, although the “naming” of solitude which the poem attempts is in complete accordance with Yousef’s findings, this naming process would be impossible without an understanding of the material nature of language in the age of print.ġ. The last section proposes a reading of Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray.” In this final section, I draw connections between the recent work of Nancy Yousef on solitude and Wordsworth’s emphasis on materiality. The second section looks at the special attention Wordsworth pays to the visual and material nature of print media in light of a new form of technology, namely the lithograph. Central to this section is the role that the awareness of media plays in the type of poetry Wordsworth envisions. The first explores the extent to which Wordsworth emphasizes the materiality of language in the age of print. This paper is divided into three sections. The prevalence of such self-reflexive elements in the Lyrical Ballads ultimately suggests that this focus on medium and materiality is central to the project of Romanticism as conceived by Wordsworth.

This new focus on the materiality of language urges Wordsworth to pay special attention to the visual and material nature of print media, as evidenced by the “Preface” and his personal letters. 1 It is this corporeality, this materiality of the printed and written word, that drives Wordsworth to pay special attention to the material tools of writing through the addition of new titles like “Lines written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone” and “Lines written on a Tablet in a School” to the second edition.

In the Endnotes to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth mentions the existence of words “not as symbols…but as things,” emphasizing the material existence of the poet’s language through his use of italics (“Endnotes” 200). In this paper, I argue that, beginning with the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth puts forth a conception of language as being materially affected by its medium.

Preface to the lyrical ballads text