Fantastic Duo - Wordsworth and Coleridge

Hello Readers!

Literature, when considered as hobby or passion, makes good friends. In English literature, we find many duo and trio of people who became good friends and they also have worked together. In the age of Romanticism or 19th century literature, we find two duos, who are none other than Jane Austen - Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

At the department of English, many new learning methods are accepted. Through the audio visual presentation, students can learn things tremendous fast. In order to understand the present topic, we have made a video with the guidance of Prof. Vaidehi Hariyani madam. As part of group activity, students were told to make pair of two and assigned to make either a video/audio clip/blog for this thinking activity.

Here is the video I've made.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

* Transcript of the video

WW : Hello Samuel, How are you ?

SC    : Hello William, I'm fine, thank you. Nice to meet you!

WW : After a long time we've met.

SC    : Yes of  course, it's been a long time.

WW : Since we both are connected with English literature, what kind of literature you've produced ?

SC    : I've worked on a poem "The Rime of Ancient Mariner" which became the famous poem of the collection Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798. Do you remember ?

WW  : Yes, I remember. It was our first collection of poems and your poem was the first one. I;ve also published some poems like, "Mad Mother", "Idiot Boy", and "We are Seven" etc.

SC    : In the year 1816, I've written a dreamlike poem Kubla Khan, and in 1817, I've also written an essay on literary criticism, "Biographia Literaria"

WW  : The publication of Lyrical Ballads was considered as a start of English Romantic Movement.

SC     : That is true. It was happened just after the French Revolution.

WW  : I have given a famous definition of poetry and it is, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, it takes it's origin from emotion, recollected in tranquility".

SC    : Yes, I've heard of it, but my poems differ from yours in many ways.

WW : Yes, my poems presented the common and simple life of peasants and shepherds, much more connected with relations between man and nature.

SC   : I have introduced some elements of supernatural mysteries in my poetry, and my aim to write poetry was to give them a semblance of truth.

WW : I've given my poetry the aim of giving ordinary things, the charm of novelty. "The Daffodils" is the example of it.

SC   : In my poem "Kubla Khan" I've included the motif of nature, specifically water elements. Some high poetic sense makes my poetry a bit difficult for people to understand.

WW : Poetry is my life. I have my soul in all of my works.

SC : Our friendship is the remarkable duo in the English literature. We will be remembered ages together.

WW : Thank You!

SC : Thank You, Nice to meet you !

Matthew Arnold - Characteristics of Good Poetry

Hello Readers !

Literature has plethora of authors and critics. To be precise, in English literature, one can analyse that how vast and deep the ocean is. Any work of literature cannot be said as fairly good of fairly bad literature. Because readers may have their own perspective to read it. One can't judge the depth of an ocean by just watching the surface. Here comes the important role of criticism. Criticism provides many lenses to see through various dimensions of a single work of literature. With New Criticism, one can elucidate the work of art with four important lenses like, Mimetic, Objective, Pragmatic and Expressive criticism. But before this new criticism arrived, there was a major critic who brought forward a new way of looking at poetry; none other than Matthew Arnold. Let's feed our minds with some information about the critic and then narrow down to the definition of poetry, along with touchstone method.

Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888)

Matthew Arnold was a Victorian cultural critic and poet belonging to 19th century. He has written famous critical essays like The Study of Poetry (1880), and Function of Criticism at Present Time (1865). He has supported poetry more than any other dialects of study like science, theology, religion and philosophy. Matthew Arnold has given something significant that he stands as a link between the Romantic critic Coleridge and the New Critics or 20th century critics like T. S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, Harold Bloom.

Let's see on which parameters Matthew Arnold explains his views on good poetry.

* Disinterestedness or detachment

According to Arnold, a critic has to be free from all personal or historical prejudices. This was considered as the first great principle of criticism. Critic should not have any fallacies in mind while giving criticism. Fallacy means mistaken beliefs. According to the book Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams there are two fallacies which may relate to the present idea of disinterestedness or detachment, intentional fallacy and affective fallacy. Intention of the author is nullified in the criticism.

* The Touchstone Method

Touchstone is a method of doing criticism taking one good work of literature and taking some part of it and comparing to all other works of the same genre, and concluding to the best one. For example if we take a poem or a sonnet on love, and keeping some lines of the poem in one hand, we try to see many other poems of the same genre of love, and try to compare them with the present poem which we are holding.

The same method one can apply in death poems also. If we take John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud, as a good poem, we can see how the lines of this poem are good or bad in comparison of other death poems. This is called touchstone method. Arnold puts forward his arguments on Chaucer, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, striking that they are not good poets. Especially Dryden and Pope are not at all poets but good masters of prose writing in meter.

* What is Poetry ?

Arnold states that poetry is criticism of life. The very work of creativity is criticism of life. It is judged by laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and seriousness of matter, felicity and the perfection of diction and manner. It should be true and there should be high seriousness in creative work, be it comedy or any other genre. While doing criticism of Canterbury Tales, Arnold records that Chaucer is lacking high seriousness. Arnold's classic poets are Milton, Dante, Shakespeare, Homer and Sophocles, Goethe and Wordsworth.

Though analyzing a poem with critical context is quite lengthy task but still if one would try, here is a poem by Wordsworth which has the qualities of Arnold's definitions.

My Heart Leaps Up - Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

The poem has both poetic truth and poetic beauty. The poet has tried to draw a landscape with poetic beauty which we can see in first two lines. And the concept of growing old, and death is also relating with the truth of life. It is well woven with poetic truth. The poem seems to fit in some of the characteristics of poetry propounded by Matthew Arnold.

works cited:
(1)https://dilipbarad.blogspot.com/2014/11/mathew-arnold-study-of-poetry.html
(2) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69374/the-study-of-poetry
Image source: Wikipedia
Poem source: https://poets.org/poem/my-heart-leaps

Thank You !

Thinking Activity 5 - Wordsworth and Coleridge

Hello Readers!

Have you ever thought that writing a poem can get you far away from stress? Well, many good habits are easily cultivated from reading and writing. It may seem strange but, in this era of web series and movies, people don't give much of their time to write something. Writing a poem each day can improve our mental health! Producing a literary work is not as simple as we think. The author has to pass through the pain; just same as a woman who is about to give birth to child.

Many critics gave their insight on different literary forms and wrote critical essays on them. A few critics are very sharp about their arguments, but some of them take some liberty and put their thoughts with lose string. Such lose arguments are broken by new critics and new ideology takes place of the old one. Poetry is one of the earliest literary forms. In this Blog, we will see the views of both the critics on Poem.

This thinking activity is part of self learning from the essays of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Here are two blogs posted by Dr. Dilip Barad, in which he has given video lectures, power-point slides on the topic and students are assigned this thinking activity to answer the following questions

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Biographia Literaria Ch. 14. Click Here to view blog. Coleridge is mainly considered as a poet and philosopher, but he also tried to give critical comments and arguments on the questions like what is a poet and what is poetry.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was associated with Coleridge and published the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Click Here to view blog. This essay was published in 1798.

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Que 1. Write brief note on the views of Wordsworth and Coleridge on Poem.

Ans: Poetry, as defined in Wordsworth's preface, is spontaneous overflow of powerful imagination recollected in tranquility. It means that a poem is the reflection of thoughts and imaginations of poet's mind. If we take the example of Wordsworth's poem Daffodils, we come to know that how the flow of imagination is spontaneous. Wordsworth put his views on poetry that 'poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science'. Which means that no subject remains unnoticed from the eye of a poet. He can cover all fields of knowledge in his poems and touch upon all the branches of sciences. In Wordsworth's poetry, we find the portrayal humble and rustic countryside life.

Now let us see how S T Coleridge defines poem and poetry. He simply puts that poem's immediate purpose is delight and it's ultimate end is truth. Any poem which fulfills both the requirements is a true poem. Coleridge further puts two cardinal points of poetry, (a) the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and (b) the power of giving the interest of novelty by modifying with the colors of imagination.

Que 2. Analyze 2 poems with reference to Wordsworth and Coleridge's views.

Ans: To A Butterfly by Wordsworth and Desire by Coleridge

To A Butterfly

Stay near me--do not take thy flight!

A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
my father's family! 

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,

The time, when, in our childish plays,

My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey:--with leaps and springs

I followed on from brake to bush;

But she, God love her, feared to brush

The dust from off its wings.

In this poem Wordsworth used butterfly as a natural image, and also portrayed bushes and brakes as rustic element of countryside life. At first, the poem gives us delight. Recollection of old days is also best fits in the characteristic of poetry, because some days are recollected in tranquility in this poem. "pleasant, pleasant were the days..."

Desire

Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,

That takes its meaning from the nobler part,

And but translates the language of the heart.

Perfectly philosophical in nature, the poem unveiled human's inner emotions. this poem also has spontaneous overflow of imagination and, just as Coleridge says, the poem also has truth as the ultimate end and pleasure as immediate purpose. If Love is a burning element, then Desire is it's flame. Here we get the natural image of fire, earth and human heart, which represents truth of nature.

Thank You.