Literary Theory&Criticism
NAME :-Olakiya Sonal Z.ROLL NO :31
PAPER NO :-3
SEMESTER :-1(one)
YEAR :-2016-2018
EMAIL ID : -sonalolakiya2405@gmail.com
SUBMITTED : - Dr.Dillip Barad Dept of Eng.
Smt.S.B Gardi Maharaja Krishnakumar Sinhji Bhavnagar University.
Topic: What according to Wordsworth should be the theme of poetry? Or write note on Wordsworth’s view on the subject matter of poetry.
William Wordsworth was born in cockermouth in camberland in 1770, the son of john and Anne Wordsworth. He went to school in Hawkshead, and then at the age of seventeen, went up to St. John’s College, Cambridge.
His main contribution in English as a poet. He was the great, supreme and prominent poet of the age. He wrote many works but some of them ‘The prelude’ and ‘preface to Lyrical Ballads’ his great and world famous works. Each and every line of their works is full of emotions, feelings and passions. ’The Recluse’ is also another great work of him. In this work’s name he was mentioned in the beginning of the ‘prelude’. He felt that it was-
Only completion of ‘The Recluse’ could he thought, justify the claims that he had made in challenging the supremacy of Milton’s Christian epic:
He was the great creature of poem on nature. In the “Advertisement” to the 1798 edition of ‘Lyrical Ballads’. Wordsworth and Coleridge state that the poems in the collection were intended as s deliberate experiment in style and subject matter. Wordsworth elaborated on these ideas in the “preface” to the 1800 and 1802 editions which outline his main ideas of a new theory of poetry. Even the language and imagery he used to embody those themes remained remarkably consistent. They remained consistent to the canons Wordsworth had set out in the ‘preface to Lyrical Ballads. ’In the second Edition of the ‘Lyrical Ballads (1802)’, he wrote ‘preface’ to defend himself from the negative reviews.
“Wordsworth argued that poetry should be written in the real language of common man, rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic”. He believed that the first principal of poetry should be pleasure and so the chief duty of poetry is provide is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling. All human sympathy, he asserted, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.”
Wordsworth’s poetic creed initiated the Romantic era by Emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. Wordsworth gave his works to human emotions, feelings and passions through their great imagination and style.
Wordsworth elaborated on these ideas in the “preface” to the 1800 and 1802 editions which outline his main ideas of a new theory of poetry.
Wordsworth explained his poetical concept:
“The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure.”
His work was very easy to understand. He wrote their ‘preface’ in the vernacular language. Because he believed that in uneducated country people as the ‘subject’ of poetry was a signal of shift to modern literature. That’s why Wordsworth wrote in simple and easily language and style. So, everybody can easily get it. One of the main themes of “Lyrical Ballads” is the return to the original state of nature, in which man led a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subjected to Rousseau’s belief that man was essentially good and was corrupt by linked with the sentiments spreading though Europe just prior to the French Revolution.
Wordsworth changed the definition of poetry of the poetry that poetry should be about elevated subjects and should composed in a formal style, Wordsworth instead championed more democratic themes-the lives of ordinary men and women , farmers, paupers, and the rural poor. In the “preface” Wordsworth also emphasizes his commitment to writing in the ordinary language of people, not a highly crafted poetical one. True to traditional ballad form, the poems depict realistic characters in realistic in realistic situations, and so contain a strong narrative element.
Wordsworth views on the theme and subject matter of poetry:
Object (Subject matter of poetry): The principle object, them propose in there poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate and describe them, throughout as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, where by ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect and further and above all to make these situations and incidents interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary, the primary laws of our nature chiefly as regards the manner in which we associated ideas in a state of excitement.
Humble and rustic life (Subject matter of purity): Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because that condition, the essential passions of the heart finds a better soil in which they can attain their maturity are less under restraint and speak a plainer and more emphatic language because in that conditions of life, our elementary feelings co-exists in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently may be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated because the manners of rural life geminate from these elementary feelings and from the necessary character of rural occupations are more easily comprehended and are more durable and lastly because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
Language: The language, too, of those men has been adopted – purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects from all lasting and rational causes of dislike and disgust because such men communicate with the best part of language is originally derived, and because from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse being less under the influence of social variety, they convey their feeling and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language arising out of the repeated experience and regular feelings is more permanent and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honor upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of man serves indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food fickle appetites, of their own creation. Thus Wordsworth’s revolutionary of all the idea in his preface. He described the gaudiness and inane phraseology of May modern writers. He insists that his poems are written in “selection of language of men in state of vivid sensation”. His views of poetic diction can be summed up as: “There neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition”.
Definition of Poetry: All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling and through this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects by a man who, being proposed of more man usual organic sensible had also thought long and deeply.
Our confirmed infuses of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representative of all our past feelings. By contemplating the relation of those general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects. If we be originally possessed of such sensibility, such habits of mind will be produce that by obeying blindly and mechanism the impulses of these habits, we shall describe objects and utter sentiments of such a nature and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened and his affections strengthened and purified.
According to Wordsworth what is a poet?
He is a man speaking to men: A man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility more enthusiasm and tenderness.
He has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, man one supposed to be common among mankind.
He is a man pleased with his own passions and volitions and who rejoices more than other. Man in the spirit of life that is in him delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings on of the universe and habitually compelled to create them where he does not find them.
To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present. He has an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being those produced by real events, especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful. He can better remember the passions produced by real events which other men are accustomed to feel in themselves.
Then, from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, feelings which by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
The function of poetry: “Poetry”, according to Wordsworth, is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science.
Poetry seeks to ennoble and edify. It is like morning star which throws its radiance through the gloom and darkness of life. The poet is a teacher and through the medium of poetry he imparts moral lessons for the betterment of human life. Poetry is the instrument for the propagation of moral thoughts. Wordsworth’s poetry does not simply delight us, but its also teaches us deep moral lessons and brings home to us deep philosophical truths about life and religion. Wordsworth believes that “poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry indifference towards life”.
Conclusion:
The “preface” is itself a masterpiece of English prose, exemplary in its lucid yet passionate defense of a literary style that could be popular without compromising artistic and poetic standards. It is also vital for us to understand what Wordsworth and Coleridge were attempting in their collection of verse and also provides us with a means of assessing how successfully the poems themselves live up to the standards outlined in the “Preface”. The preface covers a number of issues and wide-ranging in its survey of the place of the Lyrical Bollards on the contemporary literary scene
Citation: (material), material. (n.d.).
No comments:
Post a Comment