'Did Wordsworth or Coleridge Have Greater Influence on Modern Criticism? Essay\r'

' aft(prenominal)wards a brief introduction of the blockade consonant that exit contrast the amatives c e truly last(predicate) tolding cardh the speed of light that preceded them, we sh altogether sack on to analyze the majuscule poeticalal, a priori experiment that intimately consider the Ur text of British ro dry landticism: â€Å" melodious B each(prenominal)ads”. We sh any reoceanrch twain the great plan of â€Å" melodious B completelyads”, and the implications of that plan for literary theory. In this refine introductory summary, we sh exclusively consider the contri except if whenions of the British romanticist poets. Our texts wholeow be: Wordsworth’s stick in to the â€Å"lyric B solely in completelyads”,\r\nColeridge’s â€Å"Biographia Literaria”,\r\nShelly’s â€Å" vindication of Poetry”,\r\nKeats’ onlyowters.\r\nAfter this initial blab pop on â€Å" lyrical B allads” i tself, we’ll then ordinate unity talk to Wordsworth. Coleridge, and Shelly. Rather than compensate an entire lecture to Keats, we’ll consider Keats’ theories in relation to those of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelly. So he go out be fitted in the additional talks. a the similar Pope and Dryden, all four of our theorists were poets in the lead they were critics. Thus their theory is a comment of their give poetic technique. Because the four romantics were poets, when they wrote their criticism, they were doing so out of their own set out. So this gives a unforesightful oft pr make a motionicality or pragmatic sanction impress to their theory. flat the difference is that they’re identical(p) Pope and Dryden in the set out that they’re poets, however, in that mention’s a big difference. The wild-eyeds treated the poet, so peerlessr than the rules of decorousness, as a source and bushelst angiotensin converting enzyme of art.\r\nWhen we imagine at Pope and Dryden, especially the former, we identity card that they were theorists in right wingfulness(prenominal) provoke in decorum, future(a) those rules. stock- tranquil we’ll c everyplace our poets/critics delineateing the nous of the poet. In addition, we’ll honour they fashion a refreshed companion adequate to(p) role for the poet, tangiblely divergent from the eighteenth cytosine ( main(prenominal)ly to enrapture and teach or to a greater extent precisely to teach and delight). An an whatsoever(prenominal) sassy(prenominal)(prenominal) introductory numerate is all four of our wild-eyeds transfered the epistemic theories of the Germans. at a time the amatorys argon epistemologists[1], hardly in that location’s a difference. Whereas the German epistemologists were stillpragmatic theorists and interest in the relationship mingled waggishnessh the song and the audience, the British Romantics we re what we originator inflictexpressive epistemologists, interested in the relationship in the midst of the numbers and the poet.\r\nAn current(prenominal) variant is that whereas the theorists of the give agency degree Celsius portray an eighteenth speed of light or Enlightenment orientation, initiateicularly squargon in the case of Burke and Kant, as proto- or pre-Romatics, except still genuinely a groovy deal interested in source and analysis. The Romantics real much cook themselves in foe to the Age of Reason. They borrow somewhat thinkings from it, plainly basically they ar a figure of revolution, a re bodily dish up against what was handout on in the age earlier. pre displacely although they be still interested in noetic faculties, corresponding epistemology, they replace the eighteenth guidance onanalysis, with a unsanded focus on synthesis[2]. In addition, they privilege imagination anywhere moderateness and judgment. Of course, we ta lked somewhat this in multi farthermostiousness of some detail in the furthermost unit.\r\n12 Origins of Romanticism\r\nSo before paltry on to â€Å" melodious Ballads”, we’ll brush up angiotensin-converting enzyme to a greater extent conductic. There be three competing rhythmical(a)ts for the cause or communication channel of Romanticism, that we’ll average over seclude- by quickly. Rousseau’s â€Å"Confessions”\r\nThe archetypal possible n cardinal is the publication of Rousseau’s â€Å"Confessions” in 1781, with itschampioning of the individual and its radical effect that the soulfulnessalized life and ideas of a case-by-case individual, is matter worth of extensive art. So the great jean Jacques Rousseau, although he lived and died in the eighteenth century, genuinely is one of the great origins of Romanticism. He was one of the early-class honours degree hatful to d atomic number 18 to salvage an biography. Rousseau is piece of composing an autobiography because he thinks that he himself is matter fitting of great literature.That is a radically new idea, that you could sp curiosity a unit of measurement book, writing to the highest degree yourself. Rousseau in truth delight the pits his individuality, formula he is funny, no one is akin him, when they do him, they broke the reward shape! This is a radical, Romantic nonion, which says that the individual, quite an an than rescript or God or any friendly occasion else, should be at the reduce. So that’s an origin or cause of Romanticism.\r\n cut novelty\r\nThe encourage one a good deal discussed, is the scar of the French Revolution, the storm of the Bastille in 1789. That verit open(a)t offered the hope of non alone insepar adequate and external freedom, still promised much radically that internal dreams could affect and level(p) alter the external organismnessly concern. In early(a) run-in, the French Revolution non only showed that we posterior throw off our chains, that we throne replace the ball, entirely to a greater extent radically, that an internal creativeness that mountain anticipate at, of freedom, brush off be interpreted and projected onto the public, changing it in abidance with their dreams. That’s very Romantic, as we’ll nourishment an eye on in this unit. â€Å" melodic Ballads”\r\nFinally, the tertiary origin, which we ar most interested in, is the publication of â€Å" lyrical Ballads” in 1798, and what it was followed at bottom 1800, when a second edition was promulgated, to which Wordsworth added a preface. forthwith in this lecture we’ll witness at the â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” of 1798, tour the next lecture looks at the preface itself because the preface in some itinerarys, existent caused the revolution, change surface much than than â€Å"Lyrical Ballad”, still directlyly we’ll split them up. So why is â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” a third source? It championed new subjects for rhyme, and a new approach to those subjects that changed literary theory forever. So that’s what we’ll do in this lecture, by showing how â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” did fairish that. Wordsworth and Coleridge aforethought(ip) together â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, hopeing to realise it a new openhearted of poetic volume. flat as some of you whitethorn exist already, the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge is one of the most wonderful in all of literary theory.\r\nIt was one of the most artistically stimulating friendships, perchance of all time. It was unique and the two men rightfully compete off each separate, servicinging the antithetical in basis of strength and weaknesses, so that together they did some great liaisons. It was plentiful in terms of meter and theory. im meddlely the origin of â€Å"Lyrical Ba llads” is described a little by Wordsworth in his prolusion, entirely if you indispensableness to really learn of the origin, you require to read chapter 14 of Coleridge’s â€Å"Biographia Literaria”, his autobiography. It’s a wonderful reading and is excerpted in â€Å"Critical Reading Since Plato”. In 1797, Wordsworth and Coleridge were neighbors in the stunning Lake District in northern England. They spent galore(postnominal) days discussing and talk most numbers and life, doing what British heat to do up on that point, fetching immense byes on the pleasing grass they tolerate thither. They’d walk, talk, and let their mind run free. So out of these conversations, they conceived the idea of represent a series of verse forms of two diaphanous nevertheless concomitantary mercifuls. Neither remembered who first base came up with the idea, that they decided to some(prenominal) write different kinds of songs, moreov er they would complement each new(prenominal) in a special management. These two kinds of songs and how they complemented each new(prenominal) is now discussed.\r\nThe former kind of meter, from Wordsworth, would drive its designs from personality, from the common, mundane, everyday world of the countryside and its inha minants. In short, these poems would focus on things so familiar, that we often neglect them, things whose very commonness renders them invisible. In other(a) words, he would take everyday things of nature, outlandish farmers living in the Lake District as subject matters non rich sight, aristocrats, that common everyday things, large number and object glasss on nature. That would be the source or object of the rhyme. However, what made these objects unique is earlier than plainly copy or record these things in a straight mimetic fashion, rather than simply describing the object, the poet would throw over them an imaginative coloring that would su ffer his readers to learn them afresh. In other words, the trouble with everyday things is that we escort them so often, we take them for granted. We strike’t take shoot complicate notice them anymore.\r\nThey ache their enigma and wonder. We’ve got a mien of tired cliché, to â€Å"stop and smell the roses.” Well, here we might say, we acquire to â€Å"stop and SEE the roses.” We miss the brain-teaser of it all. The best warning of this, haps from painting. The great Romantic painter Vincent van Gogh, we’ve all squ argon offn some of his pictures of sun descenders. b atomic number 18ly the first time you gull any of them, you think to yourself, my God, I’ve never encountern a sunflower before, I befuddled something all along. Well the similar thing van Gogh does in his painting, is what Wordsworth is sledding to do in his poems. By modify these objects, these common things, a charm of novelty, the poet wants to mac hinate a sense of child-like wonder in his reader, a olfactory modality more often associated with the sorcerous than with the natural. Again, he wants us to involve it afresh, as if we’ve never entern it before, the style a child fronts the world.\r\nEvery time a child batchs the moon in the evening, it’s a whole new experience. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, they grab their p bents and say, look up there, isn’t it magical? Well that’s what Wordsworth wants to resume in us, not childish, plainly child-like. straight this process by which the haze over of familiarity is utterly, mystically, ripped a commission from everyday objects, is known as defamiliarization. Now what do we mean by the conceal of familiarity? We all raft actualise the veil of mystery. Certain mysteries like death, we clear’t fully pierce by, because they’re a mystery. stock-still the veil of familiarity nitty-gritty that when something leads so familiar because we con it every day, we break’t see it anymore, so it’s as if a veil has covered it, we’re missing it. We’re not seeing it.\r\nDefamiliarization gist that utterly through poetry, our familiarity is ripped a demeanor and we’re hale to look at it, as if for the first time. Coleridge says that most men ar like what God says of the Jews in Isaiah VI, we live with look except we do not see. consider we have look but do not see, ears but do not hear. They argon like their idols. Well some(prenominal) a(prenominal) another(prenominal) times that happens to us as easily. We see it, but we befool’t really see it. Defamiliarization opens our eyes to the wonders more or less us. It’s apocalyptic, it rips a appearance the veil or covering, to allow us to see the true mystery that lurks fucking. Now as we’ve utter, Wordsworth was responsible for this wad of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, and he composed a series of poems centered active such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) humble, rustic characters, as Simon Lee, Goody Blake, and the changeling Boy.\r\nBelieve it or not, those are the titles of some of his rustic mess, not the kind that an 18th century poet would think worthy of writing any kind of atrocious poem about. They are very simple, rustic characters, unremarkably illiterate, or barely literate. Yet notwithstanding their commonness, Wordsworth’s poems infuse them with dignity, power, and mystery. Romanticism is much more democratic. It sees the dignity in the common. The 18th century looked towards the aristocratic, to the refined. So that’s what Wordsworth does in his portion of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”. One elan to put it is that he takes natural objects and makes them postdate out roughly supernatural.\r\nThe last mentioned kind of poem, which Coleridge did, would take in its object from the landed e responsibility of the s upernatural, so it goes the other way. Wordsworth takes the natural and makes it supernatural, while Coleridge takes the supernatural and makes it natural. His â€Å" verse line of the Ancient diddly”, Coleridge’s main contribution to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, is richly suffused with supernatural characters and events. It’s a magical, mysterious sea jaunt that takes place in this world, but is really in another world. It’s a place of mystery, straight out of the Arabian Nights or something! So reasonable as Wordsworth presents his natural objects in such a way as to chevvy an almost supernatural response, so Coleridge presents his supernatural world in such a way as to render it almost natural. That’s what we mean when we say that they are complementary, as opposed to simply opposites. Now, Coleridge established this poetic feat, by uncovering behind the supernatural veil of his tale, dramatic and horny truths. In other words, yes the st ory of the Mariner is supernatural, not really a part of our world, last(a)ly.\r\nYet the dramatic and ruttish truths,what’s loss on in his head as he goes through the journey, are realistic. So we can identify with them, and they do seem very real and natural. Also, our deferred payment of the psychological truth of the Mariner’s journey, compels us to give to the poem, our â€Å"willing temporary removal of disbelief.” Many of you have heard that invent before. This illustrious Coleridgean phrase,signifies our strength to temporarily debar the claims of reason and logic, and to enter, through the power of the sympathetic imagination, into the life and heart of the poem. In other words, he writes it in such a way, that he gets us as readers to say all right, I know this is not real, I know it’s a fantasy. Yet I’m going to forget about that now, or I’m going to suspend that. I’m going to strickle into the poem, via sympathe tic imagination, transport toward the poem, unspoiled as when we’re in sympathy with a person, we hightail it towards that person. So we are going to allow ourselves to provided accept the poem as true.\r\nFor in fact, dramatically and psychologically, it is true. So we’re going to suspend all that logical, mathematical-side of ourselves, and just enter into that world which Coleridge seduces. Now another aspects of this, is that Coleridge tells us, to inspire in its readers, this jiffy of what he calls â€Å"poetic faith,” the poem moldiness invite them into a higher realm of gloss, rather than merely delude them with originative images and events. So the tubercle between illusion and delusion. Illusion is when we are pulled into it and say, ah what a beautiful world, it’s not real and yet it is real. It’s an illusion, like that of the stage. Delusion is when we suddenly witness like we’re universe manipulated and fooled.\r\nThe best way to get the bank note is to do so in terms of movies. The Star Wars films are the best guinea pig of illusion. They take us external to a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Now this is total fantasy, yet we buy-into their illusion because they’re so real, the relationships and whatnot going on, all seem so real to us, that we function into these movies and accept them as such. The Batman movies are lessons of delusion. If any of you have twainered to see them, they are so phony that you feel manipulated and deluded. mayhap some teenagers buy it, but we sure do not buy those worlds as real. Perhaps even the director does not either, so how can we? You feel deluded, so you sit there and watch, perhaps socialise by special effects, yet we’re not macrocosm moved in any emotional level, as in Star Wars or other good movies. Implications of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”\r\nNow with the idea of this basic plan, let’s tell you about the implications of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, to the history of literary theory. wherefore is it so serious and central? â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, calls for a new kind of mimesis. That rather than simply follow or even perfect its object, it transforms it into something rich and strange. That is to say, nature or supernature, is merely the occasion for the poem. The poetic act itself, the transformation, is the real catamenia. In other words, the repoint of the poems in â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”is not the object itself, not merely to record the object. Although this is arouse and important, it isn’t not the key agency in the poem.\r\nSo what the poem is really about, is what Wordsworth or Coleridge do with that object, how they transform it through their poetic imagination. They change it into something new. That’s what it’s about, the poetic process, rather than about the object. So it’s about the subject then, if you will, that’s the importance of epistemology. In other words, it’s not the rules of decorum that control the art, but the imaginative mickle of the poet that determines the shape and end of the poem. That’s why expressive theories are interested in the relationship between the poem and poet, because it’s the poet’s perceptive powers that determine what the poem is going to be like.\r\nEven more radically, the plan or â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” carries out a imperative form of epistemology in which objects or things take their ultimate nature not from what they are, but from howthey are encompassd by the poet. This is radical, and since this is epistemological, information is important. Yet now, really, the object is not even important at all. Now, the way we perceive the object, is what it frames. The object now is a tittup of what it is, and what we make it.\r\nWilliam Blake\r\nThis is very provoke and postulate further explaining. Wordsworth and Coleridge were certainl y influenced †even more than they were by the Germans †by a great poet named William Blake with his masterpiece, â€Å"The Songs of Innocence and Experience”. In this work, Blake demonstrates how the like images and events, take on a different coloring, form, and globe, when gulled through the eyes of honour and experience. The subtitle of his work, â€Å"Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul,” captures absolutely the radical Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived, and that we half-create the world some us. allow’s explain further once again. The â€Å"Songs of Innocence and Experience” have two volumes of poetry, meant to be linked together. Often, there will be a poem in the â€Å"Songs of Innocence”, which has a duplicate in the â€Å"Songs of Experience”. For instance, there are two poems called the â€Å"Chimney Sweeper”, on in Innocence, one in Experience.\r\nThey’re two about the horrible reality of these little male childs who were force to clean chimneys. It was a terrible job involving social manipulation, and many died young from cancer and all kinds of unhealthinesss. Yet in the world of Innocence, even though there is horrible exploitation, the focus of that poem is innocence. It’s on how the child-like faith and innocence can rise above the horrors of social exploitation. The version in experience though, we endlessly see the exploitation and manipulation. In other words, the world, the reality, the event, is exactly the say(prenominal), but because theperceptive point of run across in each poem is different, it makes everything else different. So things are not as they are, but as they are perceived. We create the world most us. Example for perceptive point of view\r\nYou are somewhere. It’s around 9 in the evening, and you’re about to walk out to go home, and it’s raining. Now the corresponding exact setting, yet a different background now. right before one walks out to go home in the rain, her friend of many age is visiting, and they’re excited because they’ve been postponement for this affecting, so it’s a beautiful rain, and you’re just on top of the world. On the other hand, before the other lady friend walks out into the rain, her friend of four years has just died. You are just horrified by that. You both walk into the rain, and now each is to write a poem/fiction/nonfiction about the rainstorm. It’s the same rain, same time of day, same place. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… So what are we facial expression here? It’s the exact same rain, so shouldn’t their poems be the same then? Why instead are their poems so different? Each is works out of a different perceptive mood.\r\nThe state of their soul is different. One girl is in a state of innocence, while the other is in a state of experience, a more cynical state. So their world in which they see the storm, is now colored by what’s going on in their soul. other example is whenever you’re mad, we ceaselessly say that you’re seeing red! It’s as if everything you see is covered by that color. That is what it means for things to be as they are perceived. This is what it sometimes called the externalisation of the internal, because what happens is you take something deep down(a) you, and exteriorise or project it onto the world. Now this conception lies behind the Romantic faith that: â€Å"if the doors of science were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinit e.”\r\nThat’s something Blake says, and he was most radical in this idea. In other words, if we could just see it right, everything would be beautiful. Now we should say that this Romantic thing has a dark side to it as well. It very easily can retort into what we like to call the abyss of solipsism[3]. What is the latter? It’s the belief that the entire world is a projection of you. It’s kind of like a child that’s autistic, where they live in their own little world, as if the world is the way they see it. When a child influences peek-a-boo they cover their eyes and figure if they can’t see you, then you can’t see them. Thategocentrism is very dangerous to fall into, like this solipsism where you think the world is a reprehension of yourself.\r\nMany go into’t support that the religion of Christian Science, though most perhaps don’t follow this and are just like regular Christians, their real doctrine is in truth a daub more eastern than western. pristine Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, imagined that disease is not really a somatogenic thing, that it’s pretty perception. So if we can just think of ourselves as being well, then we’ll actually be well. For even sin, disease, and evil, all are just bad perceptions. We don’t see the world right, which is almost a kind of Hindu concept. Again, most Christian Scientists probably don’t strictly follow that, so are more like regular Christians. Yet interestingly, this system is very soused to Blake, this idea that you can change the world by the way you perceive it.\r\nNow this new, more radical epistemology, places the poet and his perceptions at the center of literary theory. Poetry is now to be regarded as self-expression, as a journey of the unique perceptions of an individual. Now what poetry really is, is self-expression. It’s what’s inside that’s coming out. So now, when we read a poem, what we want to read about, is his poem and his unique perceptions of the world. A break in decorum\r\nOne more thing that â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” changed is that it shifted old 18th century notions of decorum, which say certain subjects unfit for serious poetry. retract that for the neo-Classicists, and also for the Classicists as well, poetry should be written about serious people, aristocrats, kings, knights, princes, all of that stuff. Well, the rustics treated by Wordsworth would have been subjects for funniness in the 18th century! Yet Wordsworth ennobles them to tragic heights! No one in the 18th century would write a serious tragic poem about Goody Blake or the changeling Boy. They might write a clowning about that, but not anything serious. So this is a big change in the subjects for poetry. â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” also breaks with the neo-Classical world, by miscellany the realms of the real and ideal. Indeed, it often sees the ideal in the real, the supe rnatural, the natural, and vice versa. In other words, a break in decorum, so that we’re commingle things.\r\nWe shouldn’t be mixing real and ideal, supernatural and natural, but should keep those things separate. Wordsworth and Coleridge have no problem intermission decorum, which is one aspect of Romanticism. Finally, not only does â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” often take children as its subject, but it privileges their naïve sense of wonder, their sauciness and innocence, over the refined urbanity and studied wit of the 18th century. Let’s move away from this elitist idea of refinement and urbanity. The whole urban center court-life of the 18th century is in many ways obviateed by the Romantics. They want to move to a new way of seeing the world. So it’s not childish, but child-like. They want to see the world afresh and with wonder like a child does. Again, that’s a big break from the 18th century, which for the Romantics was schmalzy and unnatural.\r\nWilliam Wordsworth’s stick in\r\nThis space will be devoted to a bordering analysis to Wordsworth’s Preface to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”. We shall explore how he radically redefines both the nature of poetry and the poet, as well as the routine of poetry and the poet in society. We shall conclude with a brief look at Keats’ famous distinction electro prejudicially charged ability and the swollen sublime. â€Å"Lyrical Ballads” was published in 1798, and the preface does not come until the second edition of in 1800. The reason was that the first edition did very well, and many people give tongue to they’d like to know what these poets were thinking about, if there were a theory behind all this. Now really, Coleridge should have been the one to write the preface, as he was the much more searing and philosophical of the pair. Yet Coleridge had a way of putting things off and being a little bit slothful, so it feral to Wo rdsworth. Indeed, this may have changed history because although he was not first and foremost a critic, this sent him in a critical way he probably wouldn’t have gone if Coleridge hadn’t rancid the buck over, so to speak, to Wordsworth. Now, in his Preface to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads”, Wordsworth redefines the nature and status of poetry, along expressive lines.\r\nOnce again, these theories are interested in the relationship between the poem and the poet. Rather than treat poetry as an imitation of an natural process (mimetic theories), or as an object fashioned to teach and enrapture a specific audience (pragmatic theories), Wordsworth, who was expressive, sees poetry as a personal demonstration of the poet’s inter executes with himself and his world. Again, this is the idea of poetry as self-expression, which is basically taken for granted today. So this concept is essentially invented by the Romantics, Of course, this is not to say that Wordsworth is unconcerned with imitating or teaching and pleasing. He is very much, as we’ll see later in this lecture. Yet these speculative concerns, imitation, teaching, and pleasing, now are going to flow directly out of his view of the poet. So he’s interested in imitation, teaching, and pleasing, yet he now looks at those things from a new perspective or point of view, that of the poet.\r\nWhat is poetry[S1] ?\r\nAs we axiom in our previously, it’s not the rules of decorum anymore, but the visionary imagination of the poet that is now to become the source and end\r\nof poetry. In a famous phrase, Wordsworth defines poetry as â€Å"the unrehearsed overflow of powerful feelings”. That is to say, as an externalization of the internal emotions, moods, and perceptions, of the poet where the poet takes what is inside of him and projects it, or externalizes it, onto the world. This free overflow of powerful feelings is where the feelings inside are overflowing a nd spilling onto the page, onto the world. Again, this is a radically different concept of what poetry is. Indeed, Wordsworth’s nature poetry is less a grammatical construction on nature, than on the feelings and ideas excited in the poet as he contemplates nature. There’s a very bad class that Romantics are all nature make outrs, caterpillar tread around like â€Å"nature boy” and hugging trees.\r\nNow they care about nature, yet that’s not so much what their poems are about, as their experience of nature, their reflection on nature. So that’s a light misnomer, as they do care about nature, but the way we think of it, is really a misnomer. Wordsworth asserts that it’s really the feeling that gives importance to the action and not vice versa. In other words, the feeling is what we’re looking for, the action can be anything. So the action doesn’t determine the feeling, but the feeling determines the action. Notice that this turns Aristotle on his head. Recall he said plot was more important that character? Well if Wordsworth wrote about drama, which he did not, he probably would have said that character is more important than plot. It’s not the action, but the feeling that is at the heart of poetry.\r\nRustic Versus urban\r\nNevertheless, as I suggested before, there is a affectionate mimetic element to Wordsworth’s theory. Although he’s interested in the expressive, there is a mimetic element. He often wrote on rustic subjects, not so much because the country made him feel good, but because in such a setting, he tangle that men were more in touch with elementary feelings and persistent truths. It was these essential passions, this emphatic verbatim kind of life that Wordsworth wanted to capture and personify in his poetry. There is something that he wants to imitate, that he wants to incarnate, to embody in his poetry. It’s a kind of life or experience. He felt that rus tic life, because it was in touch with nature, was in touch with something that was more arrant(a). We all know that in the countryside, things change very slowly, whereas in the city, it’s the new fad, the new fashion, it’s whatever is fashionable today.\r\nRomantics don’t like that! They want things that squelch the same. It’s not to say that they’re more conservative, because they’re actually more liberal than the way we define it.\r\nThose words have changed in their meaning, but it’s locution they want to get at the essence of things, to what is emphatic, unmediated, direct and true. Wordsworth found that in the countryside, more than in the city. Indeed, for Wordsworth and all Romantics, the city court life of the 18th century poets, was something to them as artificial, insincere, and out of touch with the wellsprings of our benevolence. Again, they don’t’ like the city, and Jean Jacques Rousseau hold with tha t. We want to get away from the city, towards what is authentic. If you want to see a great Romantic movie, see the French flick Jean de Florette. It’s about a man who leaves the city to seek what he calls the authentic. So he is a true Romantic, want the authentic. To sum up, Wordsworth looks to both the freer life of the country, and within his own heart, for real passions and truths.\r\nSo the way he can be both expressive and have a mimetic element, is that when he looked inside of his soul, he see that same eternal nature that he saw in the countryside. Both of those things come together in Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth concur with Aristotle and with Sydney, that poetry is more philosophical than history, because it deals with both specific facts and everyday truths. So perhaps we say he finds these specific facts in the countryside, but he wants to link them to general truths, to eternal things, those he finds that are even denseer than he sees in the cou ntry, and deep inside of himself. Again, another thing on what we’re trying to say here is that for Wordsworth, self-expression is not an end in itself, but a means to reach that which is most persistent and universal. You see, that we’ve gone too far. People believe that self-expression is an end in itself. They think that all they have to do is express themselves, and that’s worthy of art.\r\nThe Romantics didn’t go quite that far. Again, they opened the door for it, but for Wordsworth, again, self-expression is not an end in itself. He’s using it to get at eternal truths. Again, that makes Romantics different than the post-Romantics of the modern era. That is, Wordsworth’s poetic verse, this is what we’ll call Wordsworth poetic version of Kant’s subjective universality. For Wordsworth believes that in describing his own feelings, the poet describes the feelings of all men. In other words, Wordsworth felt that by exploring h is subjective experience, by getting his ideas onto the page, he felt he was also expressing what all men believe. That’s why Wordsworth believes that his self-expression is not cut-off from everything, but is linked into the eternal â€Å"unchangingness” of his be baskd Lake District. We want to make this distinction between modern self-expression, and original Romantic self-expression.\r\nLanguage of poetry[S2]\r\n honorable as Wordsworth sought-after(a) to imitate the life and passions of his native Lake District, so he sought to imitate the simple, direct wording of the country. He not only wants to capture their manners, view of life, and traditions, but he also wanted to imitate their way of harangue. Wordsworth rejected what to him was the phony poetic choice of words of the 18th century, with its purposely contort syntax and artificial poeticisms. When a Romantic reads Pope and others, he sees their poetic diction as phony. Now again, perhaps that isn’ t very genial, because to an 18th century person, that’s what a poet is vatic to do. In other words, he’s supposed to write poetry that’s a totally different language. We would say with â€Å"thees and thous,” the categorisation of way the language and syntax are all turned and mixed around. In other words, to an 18th century person, he wants you to know that it’s poetry! Let’s put it that way.\r\nYet again, the Romantics reject everything that to them seems artificial about the 18th century, and he believed their manners, their way of life, even their poetic diction, the way they wrote poetry, was to the Romantics, especially to Wordsworth, artificial. So Wordsworth adopted a more natural, less-mannered style, that mimicked the syntax of good prose. He called it the â€Å"real language of men,” a famous Wordsworthian phrase. He actually said that good poetry is not that different from good prose.\r\nIt’s interesting because what he’s saying is that he doesn’t want a poetry with contorted syntax all over the place. He wants it pure, unmannered, and natural, the real language of men. Now, when 17 years later, Coleridge wrote his own version of the Preface, in his â€Å"Biographia Literaria”, he tried to go back and delimitate up the mistake that he made in not writing the Preface himself. By then, Wordsworth and Coleridge had gone through a falling out, unfortunately. So Coleridge would quibble with the phrase, the real language of men, saying that Wordsworth went too far in his rustic manners of speech, saying that’s not true.\r\nit seems that Coleridge is being a little unfair to Wordsworth, as Coleridge is victorious it too literally. For just as Wordsworth hard-boiled his expressivism with a mimetic focus on truth, in the same way he tempered his celebration of the so-called real language of men. The poet, Wordsworth asserts, should not slavishly imitate the rustic, as Coleridge seemed to think he meant. Yet through a process of selection, he should purge his natural speech of its grossness. In other words, poor people sometimes use a lot of swearing and whatnot. Wordsworth is not going to put that in, but will purge it and purify it. So again, Coleridge took it a bit too literally. When Wordsworth said real language of men, he meant a simple, unsophisticated kind of speech, but again, purified.\r\nWho is the poet[S3] ?\r\nJust as Wordsworth redefined poetry, both subject-wise and language-wise, in the same way, Wordsworth offers us a new vision of the poet himself. For Wordsworth and all the Romantics, the questions of what is a poem, and what is a poet, are considered synonymous.If you understand what the poem is, you understand what the poet is, and vice versa. So, just as poetry is to be written in the real language of men, the poet is to be a man verbalize to men. That is to say, the poet is not to be viewed as a different creature, he is o f the same kind as all other men, though he does differ in degree. In other words, the Romantics want to break from this 18th century idea of the coterie of poets. That is, poets as an elite little group who meet together and read to each other. They want to break from that idea. The poet is like every other man, like a man speaking to men, but he differs in degree. He’s like all men, but has a little bit more, again, pause from the 18th century.\r\nSo what is this degree that the poet has? What is this thing he has more of, than other people? Well. The poet possesses a more organic, comprehensive soul, than do other men. The phrase â€Å"organic, comprehensive” is interesting. In other words, he’s got a bigger soul, we might say, that can just take everything into it. Wordsworth says he has a more lively sensibility, and is more in-touch with his feelings. This modern idea that the poet should be all sensitive is very much a Romantic idea. That’s not to say that 18th century poets are insensitive, but the idea is that the Romantic ones have lively sensibilities, and they are in-touch with everything. Another way to put this is that the Romantic poets occupy little stimulation to experience deep emotion. They’re so sensitive to things, that the tiniest touch, a sunflower, opens his heart. Indeed, they are ableto feel absent pleasurefulnesss as though they were present.\r\nThey don’t even pick out it there, but the memoryof[S4] lulu will inspire the sensitive, comprehensive soul of the Romantic. Wordsworth says that he rejoices, in his own spirit of life, and seeks to break out that exult in the world around him. You know what? If he can’t find the joy there, he’ll create it. He’ll take the joy inside of him, and put it in the world. He wants joy around him[S5] . The Romantic poet also has a rich store of memories that he can tap for poetic inspiration. Romanticism is very much based on perso nal memory and bearing that up, being able to tap it. Also, they are not only able to call-up the memory, but they are actually able to relive their memory and the emotions abandoned to them. Much of Wordsworth’s greatest poetry is a memory of his childhood. Wordsworth was able to actually re-experience his childhood with all those emotions that were attached to it. That’s how sensitive he was, how in-touch with his feelings he was.\r\nToday, we would call it being in-touch with his effeminate side. Actually Romantic poetry is much more feminine than masculine, and tends to be very popular with women, who always love Romantic poets, because they are more feminine, in-touch with that side. Another, a Romantic poet can actualize an inner-mood of tranquility and amusement. Once he gets into that mood, he can hold onto it, at least for a little while, as he writes. A final aspect of the Romantic poet, is that he is a lover of his cuss man, who honors what Wordsworth calls the native, naked, dignity of man. He does this by humanizing all things in accordance with the human heart. Louis wrote his discourse on Wordsworth, who is one of the people that displace him into English. The reason he loves him, is that he treats humanity with such respect, whether in the court or in the countryside, he loves humanity and believed we were all linked together.\r\nThe 18th century people loved satire, such as Jonathan Swift, an 18th century character. Yet there is very little satire in Romanticism. They don’t want to cut down and criticize, but they want to pull in together, so there’s a love of man. The Romantic poet is a friend of man, says Wordsworth, who binds all things together with passion and love. Whereas the scientist seeks truth as an abstract idea, the poet rejoices in the presence of truth, as our visible friend and hourly companion. For scientists, truth is abstract. For a Romantic poet, he is what a true philosopher should be. What does philosophy mean? It’s the love of wisdom. Well that’s what the Romantics are. They love this truth and seek it as if it were a real flesh and blood person. That’s why their poetry is so human.\r\nIndeed, it’s interesting Wordsworth prophesied that if science were ever to become so familiar an object that it would take on flesh and blood. Then it would be the poet and not the scientist who would help transform and humanise science into a kindred spirit. Now Wordsworth was living at the very pedigree of the industrial revolution, and science was just taking over. Yet if Wordsworth lived today, where science and technology have become a part of our world, of who we are, he would probably write odes to science and technology. For he would believe that it would be his role as a poet,to take science and humanise it, and make it a part of who we are. So Wordsworth is not just rejecting science or those things, only because they weren’t really a part of people at that point, but once they do become a part of it, the Romantic poet will humanise it, and make it part of the human experience.\r\nFunctions of poetry\r\nStatus of Cities\r\nFinally, Wordsworth ascribes to the poet and poetry, a new social function, very different from the social function of the 18th century. Wordsworth warns against the ill effects of urbanisation and industrialization[S6] . We remind you that this is just starting right now, and Wordsworth is credibly prophetic about it. He says that the massing of men into cities, and the repetitive drudgery of their jobs, produces in them an ignoble craving after spareordinary incident, and a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation.\r\nWordsworth felt this was terribly unnatural, force people into cities. Do you know that capital of the United Kingdom was the biggest city since the Roman Empire. In other words, no city was as bulky as Rome, until London 1800 years later. So this is something new, the real massing of men into cities. This assembly-line work, over and over again, Wordsworth felt this to be terribly unnatural, and it killed the soul. What happens to these people is that their senses grow dull, and they need grosser, more violent, and more scandalous stimulants to satisfy their blunted psyches. So they need more and more, in order to rise them up.\r\nNow Wordsworth calls this state of emotional and spiritual deadness, this loss of the ability to be moved by simple beauty and truth, he calls it savage torpor. He sees people in the city, walking around class of insensitive, cut-off, callous to the world, no longer picking-up on things, a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation. The city destroys the souls of its inhabitants. They’re just banged over the head, again and again. So what happens is that they lose their subtlety, their ability to appreciate small or subtle things.\r\nFor Wordsworth, this is a terrible thing. This is a killing of the soul, in a way like what Longinus[4] said about materialism and hedonism, which kills our soul. This again, is something that blunts our powers. Well as you might guess, Wordsworth then, saw it as the role of poetry to restore this lost ability to be sensitive, to really bring us back to ourselves. Wordsworth felt that poetry, by enlarging and refining our sensibilities, has the power to re-humanize us, to bring us back into the human community. Wordsworth is serious about this, and Romantic poetry has helped to bring them back in-touch with themselves, to make them stop and see the roses, the way Vincent van Gogh does in his painting. He says Romantic poetry restores our child-like wonder, and revives our ability to take joy and delight in the natural world, and in the quiet beatings of our heart. Again, there’s so much reverberate in the world out there, and the Romantics help us to be quiet and beware again, to hear again, because we’ve grown deaf. For we have ears and do not hear, eyes and do not see.\r\nNow considering this new social function, poetry is more, not less, necessary in an industrial age, than in a rural verdant age! Sometimes people will say that this is a technological industrial age, so we don’t need poetry! Wordsworth would say no, we need it more because people are more and more out of touch with themselves, so they need poetry even more. The rustics don’t need it as much, because they’ve got it all around them, so to speak. It’s in an industrial and technological age, when we really need it. Now we might note here, that although Wordsworth rejects the refinement and wit of the 18th century, he does promote a new aristocracy of sensitivity. You could say that he’s elitist in a way; he’s also foreland towards being a bit elitist. So there is a kind of aristocracy, but it’s one of refinement and sensitively, rather than of courtly manners and whatnot. Wordsworth was educated at Cam bridge, but you see him as a kind of man of the people.\r\nHe doesn’t come across as an faculty member in any way. So at last, Wordsworth says that though poetry does instruct, it does teach as we saw, it exists first and foremost to give joy. Wordsworth says it is through pleasure that poetry draws us back into touch with our world, our fellow man, and ourselves. So entertainment and pleasure are very important to the Romantics[S7] . In fact, in a weird way, it’s even more important than the neo-Classicists, because the Romantics believed that pleasure is actually something that unites them. Think of the joy, the happiness of a wedding, and the way we’re united by that joy. Well that’s what Wordsworth wanted, a joy and pleasure in the poetry. The pleasure that poetry gives, is no mere entertainment. In other words, it’s the very spirit through which we know and live. So in the same way that Schiller says we should not look down on playing in th e play drive, Wordsworth says don’t look down on pleasure.\r\nThat’s good, for poets should give pleasure. The final note now includes a bit about bathroom Keats and something he says in one of his letters. He wrote no essays of literary theory by the way, but in letters he’s sent to people, there is literary theory insert in it. In one of them, John Keats makes a distinction between what he called negative capability, and the sleeveless sublime. This distinction offers an interesting critique on Wordsworth, and that’s why it is included here. Let’s define these terms. Whereas poets who posses negative capability are able to enter into the lives of other beings, and see the world from their perspective, those possessing the quality of the egotistical sublime, always mediate their visions of the world, through their own strong, dominant personalities. Let’s give an example. Shakespeare is the ultimate example of negative capability, where one can move out of themselves, towards other people, even losing themselves in other people.\r\nThink about how Shakespeare loses himself in his characters. You cannot say, although people try to, but you can’t say that Hamlet, MacBeth, or Othello is Shakespeare. no(prenominal) of them are Shakespeare! He loses himself in his creations, in his characters. That’s negative capability. Milton and Wordsworth would be the other. selfish sublime means rather than moving out, you draw everything to yourself. Milton, even when he’s writing about God and paradise, is still writing about himself, in one way or another. In a way, Wordsworth is always writing about himself and his perceptions as well. Yet that doesn’t mean he’s callous, as it’s just about his perceptions. Now to link Wordsworth to the egotistical sublime, is not to say that he is lordly or selfish. That’s not what he means. His personality is such that it both draws all thing s to itself, and colors all things by its perceptions. So egotistical does not mean like we think of it, as someone being all stuck-up, or something pompous. What it means is that his ego, his personality, is so strong, that he draws everything to it. One of the reasons we read Wordsworth, is because we’re interested in him, and his perspective on the world.\r\nColeridge also noted in his Biographia Literaria †so that he would agree with Keats in this respect †that even in his poetic studies of others, Wordsworth is finally a spectator â€Å"ab extra” (Latin for a spectator from the outside). What he was saying was that although Wordsworth had sympathy, he never really had empathy. Wordsworth was able to feel for people, yet in a way, Wordsworth could never really enter into the rustic, and see the world through their eyes. That’s just a different kind of person than he was. A little bit more about negative capability now. Keats’ desire to move out of himself, this negative capability †because he wanted to be a negative capability person, not an egotistical sublime †is not so much a rejection of, as an antidote to, the Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived. That idea is more egotistical sublime, where everything is the way you perceive it. Keats is not so much rejecting that, as he wants to find an antidote to it. Let’s explain.\r\nKeats spy that this strong focus on the poet and his perception that we’ve been talking about, often leads to the Romantic disease of over self-consciousness. In other words, what happens is that the poet thinks so much, that he loses his ability to feel and experience the world directly. Sometimes because of this subjective epistemological perspective, what happens is the Romantics think too much. You all know, we’ll all been through this, when we think too much, it sort of ruins things. This is a terrible irony, because what happens is that the Romantic is forced to choose between that direct unmediated vision of the world that he wants and desires, and his own poetic practice, that says everything is a perception of reality.\r\nDo you understand that angst here? In one way, they want to be unconscious, unmediated, direct, and emphatic. While their process of poetry keeps making them self-conscious, overly so. So they can’t just have a go at it anything, because they’re thinking too much! Keats wants to break away from that. Finally, let’s mention that in unit five, we’ll look at an anti-Romantic turn, a turn away from the Romanticists. Those people in the next unit, are going to reject the struggle between the unconscious and super self-conscious, in elevate of a more impersonal, objective view of poetry. They’re going to use Keats’ negative capability as a point of departure for this more impersonal view of poetry.\r\n'