Course:
M.A (English)
Topic: Preface, Biographia Literaria
Semester:
01
Roll
No. : 12
Paper
No.: 03
Paper
Name: Literary Theories and Criticism
Submitted
to: Dr. Dilip Barad,
Smt.
S.B.Gardi
Department
of English,
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Preface, Biographia
Literaria (Chapter 14)
William
Wordsworth was primarily a poet and not a critic. His views on poetry are
extremely important and can be found in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”
written in 1800. The Preface was merely published as an advertisement in 1798.
Then Wordsworth wrote the whole of Preface in 1800 and in 1802 he further
perfected the Preface. Coleridge claimed that the 1802 preface was “Half a
child of my own brain”. The most significant addition in the 1802 preface was the
long account on nature, qualification and functions of a poet, the
demonstration of his superiority over man of poetic pleasure.
Here Wordsworth argues that poetry
should be written in the common and natural language rather than in the lofty
and elaborate diction which was considered to be as ‘poetic’ then. He argued
that poetry should offer to access to the emotions contained in memory. Then he
argues that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure that the chief aim
of poetry is to provide pressure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of
feeling- for all human sympathy, he claims is based on a subtle pleasure
principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man”.
Recovering
“the naked and native dignity of man” makes up a significant part of
Wordsworth’s poetic project, and he follows his own advice from the 1802 preface. Wordsworth’s style remains as
daily spoken and easy to understand even today. Many of Wordsworth’s poems including
masterpieces such as “Tintern Abbey” and many more deals with the subjects of
childhood and the memory of childhood in the mind of the adult in particular,
childhood’s lost connection with nature, which can be preserved only in memory.
Wordsworth’s images and metaphors mix natural scenery, religious symbolism and
the relics of the poet’s rustic childhood—cottages, hedgerows, orchards, and
other places where humanity intersects gently and easily with nature.
Wordsworth’s theory of Poetic Diction-
Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction is of
immense value when considered as s corrective to the artificial, inane and
unnatural phraseology in today. But considered in it is full of a number of
contradictions and suffers from a number of imitations. By ‘language’
Wordsworth means that language is a matter of words, as well as arrangement of
those words. It is the matter of the use of imagery, frequency of its use and
its nature, he didn’t clarify by language what he exactly meant by it.
Towards the end of 18th
century poetry became weak. The heroic couplet which had been executed with
such brilliance by Dryden and Pope had lost its energy and vitality. It was
natural that the opposition must start fermenting against such stereotypical
poetic diction. This reason became clear with the publication of Wordsworth’s
“Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”.
The terms ‘diction’ and ‘poetic
diction’ were generally used in ‘Augustan Age’ of English Literature. Wordsworth
closely examines the simple and primary fondness and duties, which he thought to
be found in the peasant class. He wrote that most of his poems were written,
‘Chiefly with the view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the
middle and lower classes of society adequate to the purpose of poetic
pleasure’. In The Preface, he mentions that the proper diction for poetry is a
selection of language really used by men, which is something totally different
from his earlier standpoint.
According to Wordsworth,
“Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned
expression that is in the countenance of all science”. Wordsworth’s views on
poetical style are the most revolutionary of all the idea in his preface. When
Wordsworth speaks of “the selection of the real languages of man” he said that
the poet should separate the vulgarity of common life from his composition, and
poet should eliminate whatever is distressing and unpalatable. Wordsworth
rejects the use of personification does not form a part of the language really
used by men.
Wordsworth’s views on Imagination and Fancy
Wordsworth has expressed his views on
imagination and fancy in the preface of 1815. According to him imagination has
a higher important than merely a faithful copy of absent external objects,
existing in the mind, as suggested by Taylor. Images have the shaping and
creating and power also.
The subject matter of Wordsworth’s
poetry is that he cherishes humble and rustic life as the source of poetry
writing. The passions of man in such condition are incorporated with the
beautiful and permanent forms of nature. He said that the poet should be
identified as a translator, who translates other people’s sentiment from his
point of view. The language of poetry and prose generally are related with
human passions. Poetry will be filled with lively metaphor and variety. Poetry
should be filled with lively metaphor and variety. Wordsworth wants to go
beyond language, into the minds of poets in which their powerful emotions,
recollected in tranquillity. It can be called the Alienation between poet and
reader, between poet and community, between poet and psyche.
According to Wordsworth a poet is a
man speaking to men, a man who is true endowed with more lively sensibility,
more enthusiasm and tenderness. He
has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, man one
supposed to be common among mankind. He is a man pleased with his own passions
and volitions and who rejoices more than other. Man in the spirit of life that
is in him delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions
as manifested in the incidents of the universe and habitually compelled to
create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a
disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were
present. He has an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are
indeed far from being those produced by real events, especially in those parts
of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful. He can better
remember the passions produced by real events which other men are accustomed to
feel in themselves. Then,
from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what
he thinks and feels feelings which by his own choice, or from the structure of
his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
Poetry seeks to ennoble and edify. It is like morning star
which throws its radiance through the gloom and darkness of life. The poet is a
teacher and through the medium of poetry he imparts moral lessons for the
betterment of human life. Poetry is the instrument for the propagation of moral
thoughts. Wordsworth’s poetry does not simply delight us, but it also teaches
us deep moral lessons and brings home to us deep philosophical truths about
life and religion. Wordsworth believes that “A poetry of revolt against moral
ideas is a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry indifference
towards life”.
The “preface” is itself a masterpiece of English
prose, exemplary in its lucid yet passionate defence of a literary style that
could be popular without compromising artistic and poetic standards. It is also
vital for us to understand what Wordsworth and Coleridge were attempting in
their collection of verse and also provides us with a means of assessing how
successfully the poems themselves live up to the standards outlined in the
“Preface”. The preface covers a number of issues and wide-ranging in its survey
of the place of the Lyrical Ballads on the contemporary literary scenes.
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge was a poet, philosopher and a literary critic whose writings
were highly influential in the development of influential thought. In his
lifetime Coleridge was known throughout British and Europe as one of the Lake
Poets a close-knit group of writers including William Wordsworth and Robert
Southey, who resided in the English Lake District. He was greater than great
and a genius of his poetic work. In the summer of 1794, Coleridge became
friends with the future poet Laureate Southey, with whom he wrote a verse
drama. Coleridge was also known to many English readers as a talented prose
writer, especially as the author of the Biographia Literaria (1817), The Friend
(1809-1810) a collection of essays and Aids to Reflection (1825) a series of
aphorisms on religious faith.
Coleridge’s view on Poetry-
At first we have to know the difference between Poem and
Poetry. Coleridge points out that “poetry is the highest kind may exist without
and even without the contra distinguishing objects of a poem”. He gives example
of the writings of Plato, Jeremy Taylor and Bible. The quality of the prose in
his writings is equal to that of high poetry. He also asserts that the poem of
any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Then the question is
what poetry is? How is it different from poem? To quote Coleridge: “What is
poetry? Is so nearly the same question with, what is a poem? The answer to the
one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting
from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts
and emotions of the poet’s own mind.
Thus, the difference between poem and poetry is not given in clear
terms. Even John Shawcross writes-
“This distinction ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not clear,
and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a
poet,
and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the
characteristics of the imagination.”
This
is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the poet’s mind, and a
poem is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that
activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination.
Poem is a
nature function as Coleridge explaining his idea and view towards it by saying
that poem is a heart of reality work that poet convey the feeling by rhyme and
that took place as golden shield. A poem, therefore, may be defined as, that
species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for
its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having
this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such
delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from
each component part.
Thus,
according to Coleridge, the poem is distinguished form prose compositions by
its immediate object. The immediate object of prose is to give truth and that
of poem is to please. He again distinguishes those prose compositions (romance
and novels) from poem whose object is similar to poem i.e. to please. He calls
this poem a legitimate poem and defines it as, “it must be one, the parts of
which mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion
harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical
arrangement”. Therefore, the legitimate poem is a composition in which the
rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work. While
reading this sort of poem “the reader should be carried forward, not merely or
chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity or by a restless desire to arrive
at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the
attractions of the journey itself”. Here Coleridge asserts the importance of
the impression created by the harmonious whole of the poem. To him, not one or
other part but the entire effect, the journey of reading poem should be
pleasurable. Thus Coleridge puts an end to the age old controversy whether the
end of poem is instruction or delight. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure,
and further poem has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the
parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of
the whole.
Coleridge’s
view on Poem: The poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.
But the difference is between the combination of those elements and objects
aimed at in both the composition.
“In
Imaginative power and Narrative Skills, Coleridge surpassed Wordsworth”
According
to the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination. If
the object of the poet may simply be to facilitate the memory to recollect
(remember) certain facts, he would make use of certain artificial arrangement
of words with the help of metre. As a result composition will be a poem, merely
because it is distinguished from composition in prose by metre, or by rhyme. In
this, the lowest sense, one might attribute the name of a poem to the
well-known enumeration of the days in the several months;
“Thirty days hath
September,
April, June, and November, &c.”
April, June, and November, &c.”
Rhyme:
Most
traditional poems use rhyme as a basic device for holding the poem together.
Rhyme is the agreement in sound between words or syllables. The best way to
think of rhyme is not as a series of lock stepping sound effects but as a
system of echoes. Poets use rhyme to recall earlier words, to emphasize certain
points, and to make their language memorable. In fact, rhymes can be extremely
effective in making language take hold in a reader’s mind.
• Lines from S.T.
Coleridge’s “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”;
“And I had
done a hellish thing
And it would
work’em woe:
For
all averred, I had killed the bird
That made
the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made
the breeze to blow.”
Coleridge’s view on
Prose:
The conception on the matters and
situation take place in the creational way to drown in hierarchy that can
better impact in humans mind. We see that a poem contains the same elements as
a prose composition; the difference therefore must consist in a different
combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. Prose
writings and its immediate purpose and ultimate end. In scientific and
historical composition, the immediate purpose is to convey the truth facts. In
the prose works of other kinds romances and novels, to give pleasure in the
immediate purpose and the ultimate end may be to give truth. Thus, the
communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically
composed. Coleridge, as the editor of her father's posthumously published prose
works. The Biographia Literaria was widely read and reviewed at the time of its
original publication and it remains the best known of Coleridge's prose works.
It’s a type of the view towards the reader and perspective through the art and
it’s tale well, we can say that more to think and more to growth by that also
it’s difficult to determine but the fact is always be like this to order such
as words in their best order.
His
view towered both Poem and Prose:
“We may say
that Element of mysticism in diction - he differentiates prose and poetry in
diction.”
The creation on purpose that mixture in what to say that convey in the prose
and poem it’s a simple way that can make magical thought, imagination and muse.
He determines that “Would then the mere super addition of metre, with or
without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems?” To this Coleridge replies
that if metre is super added the other parts of the composition also must harmonise with it. In order to deserve the name poem each part of the
composition, including metre, rhyme, diction and theme must harmonise with the wholeness of the composition. Well,
in prose the things are uncertain to say but by the derived the nature to tale
that can be prepare in such order.
In fact controversy is seldom excited in consequence of the disputants
attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few instances has
this been more striking, than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a
man chooses to call every composition a poem, which is rhyme, or measure, or
both, I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least
competent to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined, that
the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of
interesting reflections, I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a
poem, and an additional merit.
But if the definition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it
must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in
their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known
influences of metrical arrangement.
The
philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the ultimate judgement of all
countries, in equally denying the praises of a just poem, on the one hand, to a
series of striking lines or distich, each of which absorbing the whole
attention of the reader to itself disjoins it from its context, and makes it a
separate whole, instead of an harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an
unsustained composition, from which the reader
‘collects
rapidly the general result unattracted by the component parts.’
The reader
should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of
curiosity or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the
pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself.
Prose is to drown the artistic way the peaceful design to say. Like the motion
of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power; or
like the path of sound through the air; at every step he pauses and half
recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again
carries him onward.
Moreover,
Coleridge busied himself with the basic question of ‘how it came to be there at
all’. He was more interested in the creative process that made it, what it was,
then in the finished product. It’s a renew of the people and take it as a new welcome.
Well, in this way,
Coleridge’s goal is to;
“discover
what the qualities in a poem are, which may be deemed promises and specific
symptoms of poetic power, as distinguished from general talent determined to
poetic composition by accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than by
the inspiration of a genial and productive nature”
Coleridge
has always been confronted with a daunting problem in the sheer volume and
incredible variety of his writings. His career as an intellectual figure spans
several decades and encompasses major works in several discrete fields,
including poetry, criticism, philosophy, and theology. The great variety of
Coleridge's achievement, and the incomplete or provisional state of most of his
writings, poses an enormous obstacle for any reader. Yet the richness and
subtlety of his prose style, his startling and often profound insights, and his
active, inquiring quality of mind provide ample recompense. Coleridge is now
generally regarded as the most profound and significant prose writer of the
English Romantic period. No longer dismissed as a mere footnote to his poetry,
his prose is coming to be understood as an important achievement in its own
right, with continued relevance to the fundamental issues of our own times.
Imagery, “affecting incidents;
just thoughts; interesting personal or domestic feelings; and with these the
art of their combination or intertexture in the form of a poem and prose.”
Here, we see
Coleridge sometimes seems inconsistent in the development of essential terms
and concepts; but his repeated avowal of "the necessity of bottoming on
fixed Principles" lends rigor and relevance to all of his prose writings,
far beyond their immediate context. In "Coleridge" (1840) John
Stuart Mill argued that Coleridge's essential contribution to
political discourse is precisely this commitment to absolute principle, as
opposed to Jeremy Bentham's narrowly utilitarian views. Coleridge's
1795 lectures elucidate the early development of his quest for absolute principles
in politics, philosophy, and religion. Henceforth his writing would celebrate
the power of the imagination as it seeks to counter the tyranny of objects.
This inward turn is also a linguistic turn, since it invokes the power of
language to determine our conception of what we perceive. The "Dejection
Ode" is the last of Coleridge's great poems, and the end of his long love
affair with the beautiful objects of the natural world; yet it also marks a new
beginning in his career as a prose writer, as he struggled to discover words
adequate to convey the essential meaning of human experience, the ultimate
questions of being and knowledge.
Hence, through all the details and faces the
concept is clear, Coleridge’s view of poem and prose and he says that;
“I
wish our cleaver young poets would remember my homely definition of prose and
poem; that is,
“Prose -
words in their best order;
Poem - the
best words in the best order.”
Works Cited
Drashti, M. (2013,
10 14). blog. Retrieved from
http://mehtadrashti1315.blogspot.in/2013/10/preface-to-lyrical-ballads-by-william.html
P., D. M. (2016, 01 08). blog.
