Romanticism and Victorian? Flashcards
About Lyrical ballads?
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
This collection of poems was published jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798; Wordsworth added his preface to the 1800 edition and revised it for subsequent editions.
In the “Advertisement” which accompanied the first publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798, Wordsworth’s primary concern is with the language of poetry.
He states that the poems in this volume are “experiments,” written chiefly to discover “how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure”
Theory of Worsworth?
- He talks about him writing the theory of his kind of poetry unwillingly. He thought that the readers would suspect him reasoning with them so that they approve of these poems. For that, he believed that he also needs to talk about the ‘public taste’ of the country to treat the subject with clarity and coherence.
- His principal object in the proposed poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as was possible in a selection of language used by men, and at the same time, to throw over a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect.
- Wordsworth in the end had to explain why he chose to use the simple language spoken by the common people dealing with the life of these common people. He says that these common men are not influenced by anything else but speak from their hearts using their personal experiences.
Language and artificiality according to Wordsworth?
- They are not influenced by any “social vanity” as they belong to the lower strata of society, they use a language which “convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.”
- The language used by them is far “more permanent, and far more philosophical” than the language used by the poets.
- From the archaic language of neoclassical poetry which was far away from the real language used by a common life, now it returns to a kind of realism, from the world of artificial diction of a world filled with metaphors and stylistic features to the language used in the real life.
- The earlier works written by the poets living a city life promoted artificiality, the opposition came from the rural life, where people had a life which was natural and pure, with clarity of emotion without any confusion or dilemma in expression.
- His only purpose is to imitate the language used by the ordinary people and not the personification mostly found in the poems of earlier writers, which are not a natural part of the language used in the poems. Here Wordsworth not just tell the readers about the language that he wants to use in his poems, but also the kind of language and diction he doesn’t like.
Wordsworth on Neoclassicism?
• Before the romantic period was the age of Neoclassical poetry with poets like Dryden and Pope, who used to stick to the decorum based on the rules made by the ancient Roman and Greek poets. They never digressed from using archaic diction, strict use of a fixed metrical and rhyming scheme and wrote in a satirical language more suited for the understanding of the elite than the common people.
Wordsworth on Poetic Diction?
- He rejects and avoids the use of what poets called “poetic diction” to bring his “language near to the language of men.”
- He emphasizes further on not using the “phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets,” such as periphrasis, inversion, antithesis, and other devices used a lot by bad poets and which makes a reader feel disgusted rather than the feeling of pleasure.
- For Wordsworth, it was the content that mattered more than the form. The content should give pleasure rather the disgust to the readers, and therefore such phrases and figures of speeches should be avoided.
Why according to Wordsworth Poetry should be closer to Prose?
• He is against critics who don’t consider a poem with prosaic lines as good when they find some lines not according to the extremely strict laws of meter, as for them it is meter and decorum which matters more rather than thought.
• Being prosaic is seen to be a curse, where a poet is not even considered a poet if he or she is seen using lines that are closer to prose rather than verse.
• For Wordsworth, there is “a large portion of every good poem” which do not differ from good prose. Similarly, there are parts of poems that are known to be best and found to be “strictly the language of prose when the prose is well written”
• Therefore, for him, the poem shouldn’t be judged by the versification or metrical rules, but by the content as good prose and good poetry can coincide at many times.
He gives the example of a sonnet sequence by Gray
What is a poet according to Wordsworth?
Wordsworth tries to understand, what is a poet? Who is he addressing and in what language?
For him, “He is a man speaking to men” who has Poet “a greater knowledge of human nature than the common man.”
• A poet directs his attention toward the knowledge which all men carry with them and sympathies which do not need any other disciple tan the daily life of common people and which gives us delight.
• The Poet and a Man of Science have the same affection and “feeling of pleasure towards nature during their course of study.
• There is always a pursuit of truth for the poet as well as the man of science. The truth that is discovered by the man of Science is necessary only materially but the truth that a poet discovers is necessary for existence.
• The pleasure of poetry is “felt is the blood, and felt along with the heart”
• Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science”
A Poet, unlike other people, can think and feel without being excited and has great power in expressing such thoughts and feelings, which however are not different from the thoughts and feelings of the common people.
What is poetry according to Wordsworth?
In the end, Wordsworth defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”
• The process of a poet starts with emotion and thought,
• By Tranquillity, he means a being distant from the original emotion in the manner of time and space, so that the poet can see the event through a context.
• The poet feels the emotions again by recollecting the original one.
• In the end, the initial feeling is modified again later and reflected upon with thought.
• For him poetry is not about the external world, but about the inner world which is created by the interaction between individuals.
About Biographia Literaria?
Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
Autography in Discourse
Published in 1817
Two volumes of twenty-three chapters
Intended title: Autobiographia Literaria
His most important thoughts are related to imagination and Fancy
What does Coleridge say about imagination?
- He divides imagination into two parts
- Primary Imagination and Secondary imagination
- Primary imagination: It is given a divine value, namely creation of the self, “I am”.
- However, the poet has no control over it as it is dependent upon divine will and not the human will.
- We can also draw a parallel between divine will and poetic genius: intrinsic quality within a poet which makes him or a her a poet.
- Secondary Imagination: an echo of the primary. It is restricted, and connected to our conscious will. It is not as powerful as primary imagination.
- Primary governs the secondary.
- Secondary imagination is the process of writing and it diminishes the quality of creation presented by primary imagination.
- As James Engell and W.J. Bate report, the role of imagination was, “old task of the perception and retention of sense images for representation., but in 18th century it graduated to a metaphysical status.
- Going back to Coleridge, the job of Primary imagination is receiving and reproducing the essential perception of the world.
- Secondary Imagination reorganizes whatever Primary imagination has received.
What is fancy?
- Fancy is lower than secondary imagination
- It is a source of our desires, lust etc.
- It is a mode of memory without any time and space.
- It is what we call choice or will, independent of our conscious self.
- It’s a combination of things that are not accepted by religion or society and Coleridge doesn’t propagate it.
What does Coleridge say about poetic controversy in Lyrical Ballads?
• In his discussions with Wordsworth when he was his neighbour, Coleridge talked about two cardinal points of poetry.
• 1) Power of exciting sympathy of the reader by faithful adherence to the truth of nature and will modify the colours of imagination
• It was decided that Wordsworth will take this cardinal point, where his works will be closer to nature and more real.
• The work of Wordsworth will have a familiar landscape and will represent practicability.
• The characters and incidents will be taken from ordinary life.
In the Second type of poetry, the incidents will be supernatural.
• Human beings believe in supernatural since ages, and these poems will be as real as the humans believe things to be.
• The reader will have to understand the meaning of the poem by having a “willing suspension of disbelief.”
• The Lyrical Ballad has both kinds of poetry as Wordsworth and Coleridge discussed it.
• He appreciates Wordsworth by saying that if his works were silly, or distinguished only for their language they would have not been famous still. His admirers are not just from the lower class but young men of strong abilities. However, he doesn’t always agree with whatever Wordsworth wrote in his preface and many poems that he wrote were not good enough according to his own standards.
Coleridge on Poetry and Prose?
Only meter or artificial arrangement of lines doesn’t make a poem
For example
“Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,” etc.
The main aim of any work is to give pleasure rather than meter or rhyme.
Everything must be harmonised together with the wholeness of composition for a poem to be created.
According to Coleridge what is poetry?
- For Coleridge, poetry is nothing without a poet.
- It is an activity of a poet’s mind, which is modified by his or her poetic geniu
- A good poet will bring every part of a human soul into activity.
- He will then fuse soul with imagination.
- Imagination is both synthetic and magical.
- We can see that in his works which has supernatural elements in them. Although the subject is supernature we can see real emotions in the characters.
- Whether one believes the incident or not, they’ll be moved.
- The power of imagination is revealed using the opposite qualities like old and familiar, emotion and order, natural and artificial.
What does Coleridge say about poetic language?
He didn’t agree with Wordsworth saying that poetry should be written in the “real language used by men”. He believed such kind of generalization cannot be made as every individual is different. It is the mind which creates language through its reflection. It is created using imagination.
Only educated men who are poetic geniuses can be imaginative enough to create poetic language.
What is conceived through consciousness and reflected and translated to the reader is an act of imagination.
It is not every man that is likely to be improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or original sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the changes, forms, and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant.
A combination of sensibility and education is required for a poet to write real poetry which can evoke emotions within the readers.
