William wordsworth (1770— 1850) is an English romantic poet. 1798, together with Coleridge * * *, published the Collection of Lyric Songs, and prefaced the second edition and the new edition of this book, respectively, put forward the principles of poetry creation different from classicism, and laid the aesthetic program of the poet Hu Xiang. In addition, he wrote elegies. His literary aesthetic thoughts are mainly embodied in two prefaces.
In the preface of 1800 edition, he emphasized that the poet's passion soil and the theme of poetry should be rural life and natural beauty. "Because in this life, our basic emotions coexist in a simpler state, so we can think about them more accurately and express them more forcefully." In order to accomplish this creative mission, he believes that poets should express their subjective feelings through imagination and simple folk language, and describe ordinary things in an extraordinary way. In the preface, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of poetic language. He believes that a good poetic language is not the sentences and words commonly used by ordinary poets, but the language that people really use. This language is rarely influenced by social vanity, and its thoughts and feelings are unpretentious. In this preface, he also expounds the aesthetic characteristics of poetry art. He believes that "all good poems are natural expressions of strong emotions" and that poems are "not tears of angels" but natural tears of human beings, so no matter what emotions are described, as long as they are described voluntarily, they will be in a state of enjoyment. The intensity of expressing emotions, especially the true feelings of people, is the basic feature of poetry creation aesthetics, which Wordsworth saw. At the same time, he also preliminarily discussed the relationship between thought and emotion. "Our thoughts are changing and guiding the constant flow of our emotions, and our thoughts are actually the representatives of all our emotions in the past." On this basis, he standardized the characteristics of the poet: the poet is first of all a person, who is more sensitive, more enthusiastic, more aware of human nature and has a broader soul than the average person.
In the preface of the new edition, that is, the preface of the 18 15 edition, Wordsworth demonstrated the five abilities needed to write poetry, especially the imagination. He believes that writing poetry must have the following five abilities: the ability to observe and describe, the ability to feel, the ability to meditate, imagine and fantasize, and the ability to make up. He put special emphasis on the creativity of imagination. He believes that imagination, like fantasy, has the ability to aggravate, unite, arouse and merge, and imagination is best at "combining many into one, and dividing up many." Imagine adding some extra features to an object, or extracting some features from it. The purpose of imagination is to stimulate and support the permanent part of our nature, and the purpose of fantasy is to stimulate and induce the temporary part of our nature. Wordsworth did see the great role of imagination and fantasy in organizing images in poetry, and initially analyzed the process of imagination from the perspective of psychological activities.
In addition to the above two prefaces, the poet's letters also reveal many of his literary thoughts. For example, in his letter to john wilson on 1800, he said that the object of poetry description is human nature. "Where can we find the best standard? I answered, from the bottom of my heart; First * * * your own heart, and then observe those who are naive and honest, live an ordinary life, and never understand hypocrisy. " This view of advocating nature and true feelings is obviously a denial of classical laws and regulations.
Wordsworth's poetics contains negative romanticism, but it occupies an important position in the history of the development of English literary theory.