The Romantics Part 1

Question 1

3 big things I must know about The Romantics ?

Answer 1

1) English Romanticism
2) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3) William Wordsworth

Question 2

English Romanticism : About ? (2)

Answer 2

1) Awakening of sensibility in the mid-18th century
2) Sensibility

Question 3

The Rise of English Romanticism ? (4)

Answer 3

➢ Love of liberty, general independence:
Neoclassical rules were never going to be
followed to the letter
➢ Translation of Longinus’ On the Sublime into
French; widely read in England; poets
influenced by the emphasis on transport and
rapture
➢ Spirit of free thinking inspired by French
Revolution (1789-1799); American War of
Independence (1775-1783)
➢ Men of genius (Coleridge and Wordsworth)
voiced their protest against neoclassical rules;
Wordsworth’s Preface to The Lyrical Ballads
became the unofficial manifesto for
Romanticism

Question 4

English Romanticism : Characteristics ? (5)

Answer 4

➢ Romantic criticism ignores (neoclassical) rules of
judgement; the worth of the work is judged by
the impression it leaves upon the individual
➢ Concerned with the fundamentals: the essence of poetry, the creative process; matters of style, genre and diction are unimportant
➢ Imagination and emotion are emphasised over reason, good sense and imitation
➢ The ultimate function of poetry is pleasure; it
instructs (utile) through pleasure
➢ Creativity: criticism becomes a creative process in itself

Question 5

3 big things I have to know about Samuel Taylor Coleridge ?

Answer 5

1) about
2) Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets
3) Biographia Literaria

Question 6

STC : Imagination and Fancy

Answer 6

 Imagination:
 split into primary and secondary; both
distinguished from fancy
➢ Primary: receiving sense-perception from
the outside world
 ‘…the living power and prime agent of all
human perception’
➢ Secondary: reshapes sense-perceptions into
objects of beauty, a ‘magical, synthetic power’
that is at the heart of all poetic creation
 ‘…identical with the former in the kind of its
agency, and differing only in degree and in
the mode of its operation…it dissolves,
diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate; or…it
struggles to idealise and unify’
 Fancy: not a creative power; it can
combine disparate elements into beautiful
objects; but it cannot unify
 ‘…has no other counters to play with but
fixities and definites…no other than a
mode of memory emancipated from the
order of time and space; and blended with
and modified by that empirical
phenomenon of the will which
[one[ expresses by the word choice…but
equally with the ordinary memory it must
receive all its materials ready made from
the law of association’

Question 7

STC : The Functions of poetry/organic poetry (6)

Answer 7

 To give pleasure
 In an ideal society, truth might be the ultimate
end (thus giving pleasure)
 But in our imperfect society, pleasure in itself
can be an immediate end without regard for
truth or morality
 A poem must have organic unity; while
pleasure can be drawn from each part, it must
correspond to or assist in the transmittance of
pleasure of the whole
 Ornaments cannot be stuck on for their own
sake if they do not serve the purpose of the
whole (pleasure superadded)
 Thus, pleasure > instruction (in a sense, dulce
> utile)

Question 8

STC : Poem and Poetry

Answer 8

Poetry is the creative activity of
the poet’s mind; a poem is
merely one of the forms of its
expression
Willing suspension of disbelief
‘the poet does not require us to be
awake and believe; he solicits us only
to yield ourselves to a dream; and
this, too, with our eyes open…’

Question 9

2 big things I have to know about William Wordsworth ?

Answer 9

1) about
2) Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

Question 10

WW : Poetry gives pleasure because ? (4)

Answer 10

i) it imitates nature well, and a thing wellimitated causes pleasure
ii) it increases the reader’s knowledge of the
primary nature of man
iii) it arouses sympathy; sympathy brings inner
satisfaction
iv) it increases the reader’s knowledge of the
essence of man and nature

Question 11

WW : function of poetry ?

Answer 11

solely to give pleasure

Question 12

WW : 4 stages of poetic creation ?

Answer 12

i) observation
ii) recollection
iii) contemplation
iv) imaginative excitement of past emotions

Question 13

5 Sensibility ?

Answer 13

➢ Sensation over perception
➢ Capacity for refined emotion
➢ Sensitivity to nature
➢ Sympathy for human suffering
➢ Impression; individualism