Similar Attitudes Toward Machinery, Language, and Substance in Wordswor

Similar Attitudes Toward Machinery, Language, and Substance in Wordsworth, Pope and Dryden William Wordsworth’s â€Å"Preface to Lyrical Ballads† is from the Romantic Period of British literature, while Alexander Pope’s â€Å"The Rape of the Lock† and John Dryden’s â€Å"Mac Flecknoe† are both from the Neoclassical Period; â€Å"The Rape of the Lock† is from the Augustan Age, while â€Å"Mac Flecknoe† is from the Restoration (â€Å"Literary†). Despite these discrepancies in the time periods that their respective works were produced, however, Wordsworth, Pope, and Dryden express similar attitudes toward machinery, language, and substance. Their works evidence their agreement that machinery is a destructive force of serial production and repetition; good poetic language should exclude such repetition and be original and substantial, and poetic images can be used to create substance out of a lack of substance. First, the texts of Wordsworth, Pope, and Dryden evidence their agreement that machinery is a destructive force of serial production and repetition. In â€Å"Preface to Lyrical Ballads,† Wordsworth writes, â€Å"However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering† (361). In this statement, Wordsworth expresses his view that an association with anything â€Å"mechanical,† or â€Å"[o]perated or produced by a mechanism or machine,† is not exalted and is unbecoming to a poet; machinery does not help produce freedom and substance (â€Å"Mechanical†). In â€Å"The Rape of the Lock,† Pope similarly demonstrates that machinery causes a lack of freedom and ... ...ntic Period, the three works agree on three ideas. They agree that machinery is a destructive force of serial production and repetition; good poetic language should exclude such repetition and be original and substantial, and poetic images can be used to create substance out of a lack of substance. Interestingly, their views are quite relevant to a British literature student who has to use her laptop computer to produce an original, substantial piece of writing from four blank sheets of paper. Works Cited â€Å"Literary Periods of British and American Literature.† The Literary Explorer. Renà ©e Goodvin. 15 Nov. 2004 . â€Å"Mechanical.† The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 2000 Fourth ed. Bartleby.com. 15 Nov. 2004 . (The Longman Anthology of British Literature 2nd Edition, Volumes 1c and 2a).