THE ROMANTIC CRITICISMTHE ROMANTIC CRITICISM

WORDSWORTH & WORDSWORTH & COLERIDGECOLERIDGE

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The Romantic CriticismThe Romantic CriticismAfter the French Revolution, Romanticism has Shattered the old way of life. Discredited the old hierarchies Proclaimed the Rights of Man. Liberated the man from class divisions. No longer regarded kings and princes the noblest subject of poetry. No longer kept decorum as the special purpose of the poet.

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The Subject of PoetryThe Subject of PoetryAccording to Wordsworth, the principal object of poetry isa. To choose incidents and situations from common life.

b. To select language really used by men

c. To throw a certain colouring of imagination whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect.

d. to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them the primary laws of our nature.

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The Language of poetryThe Language of poetryThe romantic view of what language the poet should use is

completely different from that of the neo-classicists.The neoclassical writers Avoid rustic language.They attempt to refine and polish ordinary languageThus, "poetic diction" has replaced ordinary speech. The Romantics use the language of ordinary men, especially

rustics

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The Language of poetryThe Language of poetryThe romantic view of what language the poet should use is

completely different from that of the neo-classicists.The neo-classicists avoided rustic language.They attempted to refine and polish ordinary languageThus, "poetic diction" has replaced ordinary speech. The Romantics use the language of ordinary men, especially

rustics.Wordsworth is not interested in the manners of those who

live in the city and the court. He wants poetry to deal with the "essential passions of the

heart."

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The Language of poetryThe Language of poetryMan in nature is better than man in the city. The passions of men in nature are incorporated with the

beautiful and permanent forms of nature.Wordsworth considers the language of the farmers as the best

because they communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived.

Wordsworth rejects the neoclassical rules of poetic diction and the personification of abstract.

For him, these rules are artificial. Wordsworth defines good poetry as "the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings.”Good poetry, according to Wordsworth, is not the utterance of

commonplaces in metrical language. 6

The Definition of the PoetThe Definition of the PoetAccording to Wordsworth, the poet is no longer the singer of

the great or the teacher of polite etiquette. ◦ The poet is:

◦ A man speaking to men

◦ A man endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness.

◦ A man who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common among mankind;

◦ A man pleased with his own passions and volitions (desires);

◦ A man who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him;

◦ A man who enjoys to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."

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The Definition of the PoetThe Definition of the PoetThe poet must have certain gifts that are not common among

mankind.He is a genius Wordsworth emphasizes the individualism of the poet. Individualism is the pleasure in the poet’s own passions and

volitions which makes him greatly different from the social poet of other periods.

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The Purpose of PoetryThe Purpose of PoetryAccording to Wordsworth, the purpose of poetry is not to

teach. The purpose of poetry is the to give immediate pleasure.For Wordsworth, the poet is not a teacher of facts.Poetry is not merely another social or intellectual activity. It is "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”. It is the impassioned or passionate expression Poetry is no longer a matter of reason and of rules. For Wordsworth, poetry exists on a separate and special

plane. It deals with the products of the imagination, the feelings.

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The Definition of PoetryThe Definition of PoetryWordsworth defines "Poetry," as “the spontaneous overflow of

powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

According to Wordsworth, the process of poetic creation goes as follows:◦ The poet looks at nature. ◦ His emotions are aroused. ◦ In tranquillity he recalls his emotions. ◦ These emotions are made into a poem with the help of images of those

things in nature which aroused the poet's emotions in the first place. ◦ The reader looks at the poem. ◦ The images of nature in the poem—alight with the poet's emotions—

arouse in the reader emotions similar to those the poet had in the first place.

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Wordsworth’s View of MeterWordsworth’s View of MeterWordsworth’s revolt is against the neoclassical artificial

poetic diction.He states that there is no essential difference between the

language of prose and the metrical composition.He has attacked meter as an artificial method.There is, however, the problem of the use of meter in poetry

which in itself causes a distinction between the language of prose and poetry.

The fact is that Wordsworth’s views on Poetic Diction and on the use of meter in poetry are not in harmony with one another, and appear contradictory.

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Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeColeridge takes the trouble to examine and correct

Wordsworth's views on language and meter. He wrote his major work, Biographia Literaria (1817), which

includes some brilliantly perceptive literary criticism. Coleridge acutely remarks that Wordsworth's own theory of

language is based on a selection of the language of rustics. For Coleridge, if the provincial terms of speech from a

peasant's language are removed, the rustic language will be no longer there.

Thus, he denies Wordsworth's main assertion that a special virtue is in the speech of those in close communication with nature.

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Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeHe agrees with Wordsworth that much of the verse of the

preceding generation is false and artificial.On the question of meter, he affirms that there is diction that

is appropriate in metrical language and not in proseMoreover, there are phrases that are acceptable in prose that

would not be in poetry. He finalizes his argument by proving that Wordsworth did not

follow his own theory. Coleridge's contributions to criticism go far beyond his

corrections of Wordsworth's slips. In the realm of practical criticism, his discussion of

Shakespeare is one of the Alps of English criticism.

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Coleridge’s View of the PoemColeridge’s View of the PoemColeridge’s view of poetry is organic, not mechanical. Real poetry is the union of the heart and head and can never

be measured by yardsticks. Coleridge gives the definition of a poem that a poem is that

species of composition. It is opposed to works of science by proposing for its

immediate object pleasure, not truth.

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Coleridge’s View of the PoetColeridge’s View of the PoetThe poet is born, not made. The shaping power of the poet's imagination is what gives

poetry its distinction.According to Coleridge, imagination creates new shapes and

forms of beauty by fusing and unifying the different impressions it receives from the external world.

For Coleridge, Imagination is the very soul of poetry, which forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

He calls Imagination “a synthetic and magical power”.This power of Imagination reveals itself in the fusion and

reconciliation of opposites into one.

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