Assignment on Cultural Studies and its Four Goals

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Name: Budhiditya Shankar Das

Course: M.A (English)

 Topic: Cultural Studies and its Four Goals

Semester: 02

Roll No.  : 07

Paper No.: 08(c)

Paper Name: The Cultural Studies

Email Id    : budhiditya900@gmail.com

Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,

Smt. S.B.Gardi

Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Cultural Studies and its Four Goals

“CULTURAL STUDIES”

            The word “culture” itself it so difficult to pin down, “cultural studies” is hard to define. As we also the case in chapter 8 with Elaine Showalter’s “cultural” model of feminine difference.”Cultural studies “is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrick Brantinger has pointed out, cultural studies in not ‘a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda”. But a loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and question.” Before knowing about Cultural Studies, we should know what culture is. Culture is a anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. The term culture in American anthropology had two meanings-

1 The evolved to classify and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively.

2 The distinct ways that people live, differently, classified and represent their experiences and acted creatively.

 Culture is central to the way we view, experience and engage with all aspects of our lives and the world around us. Even our definitions are shaped by the historical, political, social and cultural contexts in which we live. Culture is the mode of generating meanings and ideas. This mode of negotiation under which meanings are generated by power relations. Culture is a social phenomenon which tends to regularate the mindset and behavior of people which is set on ancient rules and regularities and experiences. Culture is the identity of particular society and it is the mirror of the society. Culture in a simple way can be said as a particular way of life. Tradition, customs, rules and regulations, norms, artifacts (signs), religions, communities, material things, journey of 'Man' from caves to present day civilization are also culture.

 Opposite of nature is culture. Nature is outside and the moment Man enters, it becomes culture. Whatever which is not nature is culture. All the activities that are done between people on the piece of land and with the other people, culture is the entire range of activities that all the people of the society do. Culture deals with identity. For example, Mahatma Gandhi is the icon of India.

Nature is something which is outside the control of human beings and culture is the introduction of what humans do and think. Culture is the great help out of our present difficulties; Culture beings the pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which has been thought and said in the world: and through his knowledge, turning of stream of fresh and free thoughts upon our stock notions and habits, which we follow but mechanically. When the things are done by elite group, it is called Culture and when the same things are done by minority group, it s called sub-culture. Elite culture controls meanings because it controls the terms of the debate. Non-elite views on life and art are rejected as 'Tasteless', 'useless' or 'even stupid' by the elite. Culture is one of the two or three terms to define. It is an umbrella term. Literature is one of its disciplines. It cannot be understood by one discipline. We are multi-disciplinary. Every discipline studies culture but in a different way.

Four Goals of Cultural Studies-

   1) Cultural studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history. Cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text- for example, Italian Opera, a Latinotelenovela, the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing- and drawing conclusions about the changes in textual phenomena over time. Cultural studies is not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about "art". Intellectual works are not limited by their own "borders" as single texts, historical problems or even disciplines, and the critic's own personal connections to what is being analysed may also be described. Henry Giroux and others write in their Dalhousie Review manifesto that cultural studies practitioner are "resisting intellectuals", who see what they do as "an emancipatory project" because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher education. But this kind of criticism, like feminism, is an engaged rather than a detached activity.

2) Cultural studies is politically engaged. Cultural critics see themselves as "oppositional", not only within their own disciplines  but to many of the power structures of the society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and "minority" or "subaltern" discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, thus they can be reconstructed. Such a notion, taken to a philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual, whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic "Great Man" or "Great Book" theory, and a relocation of aesthetics and culture from the ideal realms of test and sensibility into the arena of a whole society's everyday life as it is constructed.

3) Cultural studies denies the separation of "high" and "low" or elite or popular culture. Being a "cultured" person means acquainted with "highbrow" art and intellectual pursuits. Cultural critics work to transfer the term to include mass structure, whether popular, folk, or urban. Following theorists Jean Baudrillard and Andreas Huygens, cultural critics argue that after World War 2 the distinctions among, high, low and mass culture collapsed, and they cite other theorists such as Pierre Bordeaux or Dick Hebdige on how "good taste" often only reflects prevailing social, economic, and political power bases. Drawing upon the ideas of French historian Michel de Certeau, cultural critics examine "the practice of everyday life", studying literature as an anthropologist would, as a phenomenon of culture, including a culture's economy. Rather than determining which are the "best" works produced, cultural critics describe what is produced and how various productions relate to one another. They aim to reveal the political, economic reasons why a certain cultural product is more valued at certain times than others. "The Birth of Captain Jack Sparrow: An Analysis" and " Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)"  are some famous works and movies.

4) Cultural studies analyses not only the cultural work, but also means of production. Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such para literary questions as these: who supports a given artist? A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway's Study of the American romance novel and its readers, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry's decisions about books that will minimize its financial risks. Reading in America, edited by Cathy N. Davidson, which includes essay on literacy and gender in Colonial New England; urban magazine audiences in Eighteenth Century New York city; the impact upon reading of technical innovations as cheaper eyeglasses, electric lights, and trains; the Book-of -the-Month Club; and how writers and texts go through fluctuations of popularity and canonicity. These studies help us recognise that literature does not occur in a space separate from other concerns of our lives.

             Cultural studies thus joins subjectivity that is, culture in relation to individual lives- with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies practitioners deny "humanism" or "the humanities" as universal categories, they strive for what they might call "social reason" which often (closely) resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.

           Year 2050, the United States will be what demographers call a "majority-minority" population; that is, the present numerical majority of "white", "Caucasian", and "Anglo"- Americans will be the minority, particularly with the dramatically increasing numbers of Latina /o residents, mostly Mexican Americans. As Gerald Graff and James Phelan observe, "It is a common prediction that the culture of the next century will put a premium on people's ability to deal productively with conflict and cultural difference. Learning by controversy is sound training for citizenship in that future".

          The next class where Western culture is portrayed as hopelessly compromised by racism, sexism and homophobia: professors can acknowledge these differences and encourage students to construct a conversation for themselves as "the most exciting part of (their) education".

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Assignment on Poetic Process and the process of Depersonalization by T.S.Eliot

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Name: Budhiditya Shankar Das

Course: M.A (English)

 Topic: Poetic Process and the process of Depersonalization by T.S.Eliot

Semester: 02

Roll No.  : 07

Paper No.: 07

Paper Name: Literary Theory & Criticism: The 20^th Western & Indian Poetics-2

Email Id    : budhiditya900@gmail.com

Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,

Smt. S.B.Gardi

Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Poetic Process and the process of Depersonalization by T.S.Eliot

The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of

information—deposited by the nineteenth century have

been responsible for an equally vast ignorance.

                                                                                 —TS Eliot

    Tradition and Individual Talent:-

                                               Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. His most famous work is “The Waste Land.” On one level this highly complex poem describes cultural and spiritual crisis.

                                           "The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a 'personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." (From 'Tradition and the Individual Talent,' 1920)

 T.S Eliot’s works:-

    Poetry

    Plays

    Nonfiction:-

    “Tradition and Individual Talent (1920)”

    The sacred wood: Essays on poetry and criticism

    A choice of Kipling’s verse ( 1941)

    The Frontiers of criticism (1956)

                 Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary theory. In this dual role, he acted as poet- critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Tradition and Individual Talent” is one of the more well known works that Elion produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot’s influential conception of the relationship between the poet and the literary tradition which precedes him.

                                      T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual Talent” was published in 1919 in The Egoist- the Times Literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in “The Sacred Wood: Essays on poetry and criticism in 1920. This essay is described by David Lodge as the English of the twentieth century. The essay is divided into three main sections:-

     The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition

     The Second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry.

     The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of poetry are complementary things.

 Eliot asserts that the word “tradition’’ is not a very favorable term with the English, who generally utilize the same as a term of censure. The English do not possess an orientation towards Criticism as the French do; they praise a poet for those aspects of the work that are individualistic.

    For Eliot, tradition has a three-fold significance.

    Firstly, tradition can not be inherited, and involves a great deal of labor and erudition.

    Secondly, it involves the historical sense which involves apperception not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its present.

    Thirdly, the Historical sense enables a writer to write not only with his own generation in mind, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature from Homer down to the literature of his own country farms a continuous literary tradition.

                             Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry in relation to it. He wishes to correct for the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds the belief that art progresses through change - a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognized only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a Classicist, felt that the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognized, that tradition, a word that "seldom... appears except in a phrase of censure," was actually a thus-far unrealized element of literary criticism. Eliot says that the Englishmen have a tendency to insist, when they praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of his work they try to find out what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of that man. They try to find out the difference of the poet with his contemporaries and predecessors. They try to find out something that can be separated in order to be enjoyed.

 But if we study the poet without bias or prejudice, we shall often find that not the best, but the most individual of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality forcefully and vigorously. According to Eliot tradition and individual talent are not separate entity. They are inseparable and hence go together.

    Historical Sense/ “the historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”

According to Eliot, knowledge of tradition plays vital role in the development of personal talent, He writes: ‘Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves the historical sense.’

                  This means sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of past, but of its presence. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes  a write traditional and it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporanity.  For Eliot, the term "tradition" is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the same time, a sense of present temporality. Eliot challenges our common perception that a poet’s greatness and individuality lies in his departure from his predecessors. Rather, Eliot argues that "the most individual parts of his (the poet) work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense," that is, not only a resemblance to traditional works, but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.

Eliot gives importance to the interdependence of past and the present. He finds not contradictory but supplementary elements in the co- relationship of the past and the present. He expresses his views as follows:-

               “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artist. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. Mean this as a principle of aesthetic, that he merely historical criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relation, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.”

 Eliot’s theory of poetic process and the process of depersonalization:-

                          Eliot starts the second part of his essay with: “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”

                        The artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalization, which is “a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self – sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality”. There still remains this process of depersonalization and its relation to sense of tradition. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channelled and elaborated. He compares the poet to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings, and emotions that are synthesized to create an artistic image that captures and relays these same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges unaffected by the process. The artist stores feelings and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product. What lend greatness to a work of art is not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the nature of the artistic process by which they are synthesized. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In this view, Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet is a depersonalized vessel, a mere medium.

Analogy of chemical reaction and poetic process-

                                   “The analogy was that of that catalyst, when the two gases oxygen and sulphur dioxide, are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are material.”

                           Eliot explains his theory of depersonalization more elaborately. He elaborates his idea by saying that the emotion and experiences in the art are different than the emotion and experiences of the artist He writes:-

                               “If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry, you see how completely any semi ethical criterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artist process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place that counts” He further writes:-

                                  “The poet has, not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium which is only a medium and not a personality in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. In impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”  

    “Emotion recollected in tranquility” is an inexact formula for it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor with without distortion of meaning, tranquility.”

                             It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotion or may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing of the emotion of people. Who have very complex or unusual emotions in eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express: and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, to express feelings which are not in actual emotion at all. And emotion which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion” recollected in tranquility is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection; not without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the  practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not ‘recollected’ and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is ‘tranquil’ only in that it is a passive attending upon the event of course this is a great deal in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate.

          The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

                 In the last section of this essay; Eliot says that poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things. He writes “To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conclude to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad.” Finally he ends his essay with: “very few know when ether is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal and the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done and he is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”

    Conclusion:-

                     To conclude, Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom according to his theory of ‘anxiety of influence envisions the strong poet to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.
 In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of  the use of poetry and the use of criticism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard university in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called “Tradition and the Individual talent” the most juvenile of his essays.                

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Assignment on salient features of Victorian Age and its poets too.

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Name: Budhiditya Shankar Das

Course: M.A (English)

Topic: Salient features of Victorian Age and its Poets too.

Semester: 02

Roll No.  : 07

Paper No.: 06

Paper Name: The Victorian Literature

Email Id    : budhiditya900@gmail.com

Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,

Smt. S.B.Gardi

Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Salient features of Victorian Age and its Poets too.

      The Victorian age is believed to be from 1850-1900 when Victoria became Queen in 1837; English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age. The Victorian era was a bridge between the romantic era in literature of the 18th century and the industrialized world of the 20th century. In England, the Victorian era was the era of massive empire building.  Writers like Joseph Conrad were inspired by daring adventure found in the quest to take over far-flung areas of the world. A growing English middle class, wanting to gain access into the noble class, produced some appearances of a stuffy, proper culture. Manufacturing was growing and living conditions for the poor were often deplorable. Cultural struggles grew over science v/s religion, the role of women and proper behavior, especially with regard to sexuality. All of these elements showed up in the popular forms of literature. Coleridge, Shelley,Keats, Byron and Scott had passed away. Keats and Shelley were dead but already there had appeared three disciples of those poets who were destined to be far more widely read than were their masters. Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems appearing in almost simultaneously with the last works of Byron, Shelley and Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication of his collected poems, two volumes, that England recognized in him one of her great literary leaders. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had been writing since 1820. Browning had published his Pauline in 1833. But in 1846, when Bells and Pomegranates were published, people began reading his works and started appreciating him. A group of pose writers had emerged in like Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle andRuskin. In this age, the long struggle of the Anglo- Saxons for personal liberty was settled and democracy was established. The house of Commons becomes the ruling power in England; and a series of new reform bills rapidly extend the suffrage, until the whole body of English people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them. Because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in 1833; but in the middle of the century, England awoke to the fact that slaves are not necessarily Negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial slavery. Because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of democracy, comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting, and more of its moral units, as the nation realizes that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while the privileged classes reap most of the financial and political rewards. With the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men; that brotherhood is universal, not insular; that a question of justice is never settled by fighting; and that war is generally unmitigated horror and barbarism. The Victorian age is especially marked because of its rapid progress.

SALIENT FEATURES OF THE AGE-

The Victorian age is especially marked because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions like spinning looms to steamboats and from matches to electric lights. All these material things as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people, and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry; though as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and mechanics to determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by long use have become familiar as country roads, or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also will have their associations and memories, and a poem on the rail roads maybe as suggestive as Wordsworth’s sonnet on Westminster Bridge. This age can be called as the Age of Compromise (compromise between science and religion; between democracy and autocracy).Industries had been started emerging in the cities which led to migration. Due to migration, people left villages and agriculture was affected severely.

In other words, we can say, there was death of agriculture. When everyone went to city, it became overpopulated. As people were working in industries, they got money and food but getting shelter was their main problem. There was lack of space and for that, people started quarrelling with each other. Intoxication had started, prostitution started taking place and evil things started happening. There was dark and gloomy atmosphere everywhere. Majority of people were poor. The dominant people were money minded and so humans were used as machines. Workhouses were getting full as people were in search of job to earn money.

                 Workhouses looked like prisons. They were very much dirty and stinky. The condition of people was not good. They were given a fixed amount of meal. Women were kept away from men and their husbands too. Children too were kept away from adults. The people in the workhouses had to work for twelve hours whether it be a child or an adult. They had the permission to bath once in a week. Ill people were kept in sick wards. A number orphanages and prostitutes increased as woman many a times didn't get work anywhere. She had to involve in prostitution and then chances of getting pregnant increased.

If this happened, the lady had to deliver the child and then left that child to orphanages. There was severe socio-economic depression people were threatened by the name of God. People had to work in harsh conditions as there was not enough electricity. Each job was hard and everyone had to suffer a lot.

Achievements- The Oxford Movement

This movement took place in the 19^th century. It was an outcome of a long controversy and ideological conflicts amongst different Christian sects and Churches and therefore it may be called a religious movement. Its name was Oxford movement as it was centered at the University of Oxford that sought a renewal of Catholic or Roman Catholic, thought and practice within the Church of England in opposition to the Protestant tendencies of the church. This movement is also called Tractarian Movement as it was carried throughout the tracts and pamphlets. The origin of the Oxford movement can be traced to the opposition of the scientific discoveries against age old religious beliefs and faiths. The aim of the movement was to rehabilitate the dignity of the church, to defend the church against the interference of the state, to fight against rationalism. This age is remarkable for the growth of democracy following the Reform Bill of 1832; for the spread of education among all classes; for the rapid development of the arts and sciences; for important mechanical inventions; and for the enormous extensions of the bounds of human knowledge by the discoveries of science.

Poets

1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (06 March 1806-29 June 1861) was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Her first adult collection, The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. She wrote prolifically between 1841-1844 producing poetry. Elizabeth’s volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this time, she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her work. She is remembered for poems like How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856). She wrote her own Homeric Epic the Battle of Marathon: A Poem. Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with other poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics.

    2 Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822-15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Arnold published his second volume of poems in 1852, Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. In 1853, he published poems: A New Edition, a selection from two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems,Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. In 1854, Poems: Second Series appeared; also a selection, it is included the new poem, Balder Dead. Arnold is sometimes called the Third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. Arnold was keenly aware of his place in poetry.

Conclusion :
To conclude this point we can see that basically in this age the most beneficial things is the cheapening of printing and paper. They increased the demand for books. This age is also known as the age of peace. In these ages there is also one important development of material and during that time there was a revolution happened in commercial enterprise.

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Assignment on Salient features of Wordsworth & Coleridge as Romantic Poets

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Name: Budhiditya Shankar Das

Course: M.A (English)

 Topic: Salient features of Wordsworth & Coleridge as Romantic Poets. 

Semester: 02

Roll No.  : 07

Paper No.: 05

Paper Name: The Romantic Literature

Email Id    : budhiditya900@gmail.com

Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,

Smt. S.B.Gardi

Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Salient features of Wordsworth & Coleridge as Romantic Poets.

        The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, part of the scenic region in North-Western England known as the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife.

After the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworth's father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire.

Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791.

Wordsworth’s masterpiece however was his large autobiographical poem entitled The Prelude (1850), which focused on the formative experience of his youth. His first two collections of poetry were published in 1793, five years after his first published poem. They respectively entitled An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. Both were strongly influenced by the writing style of the 18^th century. Not long after this in 1795, Wordsworth had a fateful meeting with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In spite of, or perhaps, even because of their at times stormy relationship, they managed to collaborate and produce the founding document of the English Romantic movement, published in 1798; The Lyrical Ballads. 

In 1807, the third edition of what was to become a classical work was supplemented with a long- awaited introduction written by Wordsworth. Having defined what poetry is according to Wordsworth, he defines it as:

“ He is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, 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, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the going-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

The complete poetry work of Wordsworth is too much big. It also includes Guide to the Lakes (1810), The Excursion (1814), and Laodamia (1815).  Both Durham University and Oxford University awarded him with the honorary Doctor of Civil Law Degree in 1838 and 1839. When his friend and poet colleague Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth became the new poet Laureate in Great Britain, a title he would keep until his death. He died in 1850 at the age of 80 at Rydal Mount, a house in the Lake District near Ambleside, made famous as the home where he lived and died. The cause of his death was a re- aggravating cause of pleurisy, which is an inflammation that prevents breathing by causing terrible pain when one does so. It is typically the result of pneumonia. Life of both Coleridge and Wordsworth, in particular, their collaboration on the important Lyrical Ballads is at the heart of the film Pandemonium (2000). Some of his major works are- “Lyrical Ballads”, “Simon Lee”, “We are Seven”, “Lines written in Early Spring”, “Expostulation and Reply”, “The Tables Turned”, “The Thorn”, “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways”, “I Traveled among Unknown men”, “Lucy Gray”. Now, when we talk about Romantic poetry, it is the break from the set rules and regulations. The Romantics showed interest in the country life. In their poetry, they discarded the glamours of artificial life and turn to the elements and simplicities of life lived in closer touch with the beauties and charm of nature. Every genius is a rebel and so was Wordsworth. He protested against the traditions and usages setup by the poets of the pseudo- classical school during the Eighteenth century. The three main principles of his poetic diction are-

1) The language of poetry should be the language really used by men but it should be a selection of such language.

2) It should be the language of men in a state of vivid sensation. It means that language used by people in a state of animation can form the language of poetry.

3) There is no essential difference between the words used in prose and in metrical composition. The elements of simplicity and ease that we come across in his poetry are principally due to his adoption of a language well within the reach of common people.

          Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction was disapproved by Coleridge and in the pages of Biographia Literaria, he found numerous defects in Wordsworth’s theory. In spite of his shortcoming’s, Wordsworth rendered remarkable service to poetry by effectively putting an end to the use of false poetic diction. He brought back the natural beauty and simplicity of poetry. Wordsworth’s poetry exhibits Romantic characteristics and for his treatment towards Romantic elements, he stands supreme and he an be termed a Romantic poet for number of reasons. The Romantic movement of the early Nineteenth century was a revolt against the classical tradition of the Eighteenth century; but it was also marked by certain positive trends. Wordsworth was, of course, a pioneer of the romantic movement of the 19^th century. With the publication of The Lyrical Ballads, the new trends became more or less established. The reasons why he was called a Romantic poet are-

1) Imagination-  where the Eighteenth century poets used to put emphasis much on ‘wit’, the Romantic poets used to put emphasis on ‘imagination’. Wordsworth uses imagination so that the common things could be made to look strange and beautiful through the play of imagination. In his famous “Intimation Ode” it seems to him as to the child “the earth and every common sight” seemed “appareled in celestial lights.” Here he says-

“There was a time when meadow, grove

And stream

The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light.”

Moreover, in this poem, we find a sequence of picture through his use of imagery. Through his imagination, he says,

“The rainbow come and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare.”

Similarly, in the poem Tintern Abbey, the poet sees the river, the stream, steep and lofty cliffs through his imaginative eyes. He was enthusiastically charmed at the joyful sound of the rolling river. Here he says,

“Once again

Do I behold those steep and lofty cliffs

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion and

Connect

The landscape with quiet of the sky.”

In this poem, the poet seems that the nature has a healing power. Even the recollection of nature soothes the poet’s troubled heart. The poet can feel the existence of nature through imagination even when he is away from her, he says,

“In lovely rooms and ‘mid the dim

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensation sweet.”

2) Nature- He is especially regarded as a poet of nature. In most of the poems of William Wordsworth, nature is constructed as both a healing entity and a teacher or moral guardian. Nature is considered in his poems as a living personality. He is a true worshiper of nature: nature’s devotee or high priest. The critic Cazamian says:

“To William Wordsworth, nature appears as a formative influence superior to any other, the educator of senses or mind alike, the shower in our hearts of the deep laden seeds of our feelings and beliefs.”

He dwells with great satisfaction on the prospects of spending his time in groves and valleys and on the banks of streams that will lull him to rest with their soft murmur. For Wordsworth, nature is a healer and he ascribes healing properties to nature in Tintern Abbey. This is a fairly obvious conclusion drawn from his reference to “Tranquil Restoration”, that his memory of the Wye offered him “in lovely rooms and mid the in/ of towns and cities.”

3) Subjectivity- it is the key note of Romantic poetry. He expresses his personal thoughts, feelings through his poems. In Ode: Intimation of Immortality, the poet expresses his own/ personal feelings.  Here he says, that he can’t see the celestial light anymore which he used to see in his childhood. He says,

“It is not how as it hath been of yore

Turn wheresoever I may,

By might or day,

The things which I have seen I now can

Seen on more.”

4) Pantheism and Mysticism- These two are almost interrelated factors in the nature poetry of the Romantic period. Wordsworth conceives of a spiritual power running through all natural objects- the “presence that disturbs me with the law of elevated thoughts” whose dwelling is the light.

             Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St.Mary in Devon, England. Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), the well-respected Vicar of Ottery St.Mary and headmaster of the King’s School, a free grammar school established by King Henry VIII (1509–1547) in the town. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squier's School in South Molton, Devon, and Lecturer of nearby Molland. John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself. After John Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ’s Hospital, a charity school which was founded in the 16th century in Greyfairs, London, where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowle. In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote: "At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll – and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read."

Throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has been linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance from his family at such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem "Frost at Midnight": "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace." He died on 25 July 1834. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria.

His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English- speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence of Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition not identified from poor physical health that may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illness. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction. His opium addiction now began to take over his life: he separated with his wife Sarah in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Doctor Daniel in 1814. His addiction caused severe constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas. He is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of “Conversational Poems”. 

          The idea of utilizing common language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge’s originality. As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally important to poetry as a critic. His philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics such as A O Lovejoy and I A Richard’s.  Coleridge is probably best known for his long poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mainer and Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have came under his influence: its words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around one’s neck, the quotation of “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”, and the phrase “a sadder and a wiser man”.

The phrase “all sadder great and small” may have been inspired by the Rime:“He prayeth best, who loveth best;/All things both great and small;/For the dear god who loveth us;/He made and loveth all.”

Christabel is known for its musical rhythm language and its Gothic tale. Kubla khan or A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter is also widely known. Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional Romantic aura because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their “exquisite metrical movement” and “imaginative phrasing”. Some of his conversational poems are-

The Eohian Harp (1795)

Fears in Solitude (1798)

This Lime- Tree Bower my Prison (1797)

Dejection- An Ode (1802)

To William Wordsworth (1807)

Frost at Midnight (1798)

The above listed poems are entitled  “Conversational Poems”. The term itself was coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper, who borrowed the subtitle of The Nightingale: A  Conversational Poem (1798) to describe the other poems as well. The poems are considered by many critics to be among Coleridge’s finest verses; thus Harold Bloom has written, “With Dejection, The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge at his most impressive.” They are also among his most influential poems. The last ten lines of Frost at Midnight were chosen by Harper as the “best example of the peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet”. The speaker of the poem is addressing his infant son, asleep by his side:

“Therefore all seasons shall be sweet

To thee,

Whether the summer clothe the

General earth

With the greenness, or the redbreast sit

And sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare

Branch

Of mossy apple tree, while the nigh

Thatch’Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the

Eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast, or if the secret ministry of frost,

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet moon.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the remarkable poets of Romantic period. He was a most intimate friend of Wordsworth and their influence on one another was most productive. Coleridge’s poems are removed from the gravity and high seriousness of Spenser, Milton or Wordsworth.

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