ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY

1. ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY Lecture 3: The Romantics

2. Age of Sensibility, or Age of Johnson (1750-1790s) • also referred to as Pre-Romanticism • rejection of neoclassical ideals • new trends in poetry: • nature poetry with specific landscapes • Gothic and medievalism in poetry (e.g. ‘Graveyard School’, Edward Young) • Scottish vernacular and dialect in Robert Burns’ patriotic songs

3. Pre-Romantic Criticism • Joseph Warton labels Pope as a ”correct poet,” while praises Shakespeare’s ”boundless imagination” • Edward Young argues against ”easy imitation” – question of imitation vs. originality • Edmund Burke’s ‘revolutionary’ ideas of the sublime and taste

4. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into (the Origin of Our Ideas of) the Sublime and the Beautiful(1757) • political writings, empiricist, John Locke’s influence • midway between neoclassical and romantic views • ”Introduction” on taste, first part on emotions, 2nd on the sublime, 3rd on the beautiful, 4th on their comparison, and 5th on poetic language

5. Burke on Taste (1) • ”the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all human creature” (regulative) • ”Taste […] that faculty, or those faculties of the mind which are affected with, or which form a judgment of the works of imagination and the elegant arts.” (41A) • faculties of the mind connecting us with the external world: 1. the Senses, 2. the Imagination, 3. the Judgment • 1. the word ‘Taste’ comes from a sensory faculty related to palatable pleasures – figurative term with metaphorical expressions • the pleasures and pains of all the senses (taste and sight) are common to all of us, ”high and low, learned and unlearned” (42B)

6. Burke on Taste (2) • 2. Imagination is ”the representative of the senses”, ”a sort of creative power” with which we can combine images in a new manner (wit?), but cannot produce anything absolutely new (Locke) 42B • resemblance is pleasurable vs. differentiation is not (cf. Judgment) • due to degrees of natural sensibility and knowledge, there are differences in men’s sensing (e.g. anatomist in the painter’s studio)

7. Burke on Taste (3) • 3. Judgment varies in people • ”The cause of bad Taste is a defect of judgment” (44B) – it can be improved • summary: Taste is not a simple idea; it is ”partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary plasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning […] the human passions, manners and actions.” (44B) • the groundwork of Taste is common to all but we have different degrees of sensibility

8. source: ideas of pain, danger, terror, death sublime objects are vast and massive with rugged surfaces loves the right lines dark and gloomy – obscure! it is founded on pleasure small and delicate objects smooth and polished ”line of beauty” is the S-curve light and clear The Sublime - ”the productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” 45B the Sublime vs. the Beautiful

13. Age of Revolutions • great changes from 1760s: destruction of the countryside, overpopulation of urban areas (industrial and agrarian revolution) • harsh division bw. the class of the workers and the bourgeois capitalists (social changes) – see Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations • great impact of the French revolution (political, ideological changes, e.g. Tom Paine, The Right of Man; William Godwin, Political Justice; Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1790s)

14. The Romantic Period (1798-1870) ---Age of the Romantic Triumph (1798-1832) • in 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads - W. Wordsworth’s and S. T. Coleridge’s poems – cf. ”the Lake Poets”, less radical • Shelley, Byron, Keats as the second generation of poets, more radical • also ”golden age” in fiction (Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Thackeray)

17. interested in the universal impersonal tone strongly conventional external problems familiar places order and clarity cult of rationality interest in the particular, the individual deeply personal tone highly original internal concerns exotic, even Gothic energy and imagination cult of emotion Neoclassical vs. Romantic features

18. William Wordsworth, ”Preface” to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads (1802) • the volume is an ”experiment” (47A) • features of these new poems (48A): • topics are ”incidents and situations from common life” • simple language ”really used by men” • with a ”certain colouring of imagination” • ”essential passions” and ”elementary feelings” of ”low and rustic life” are shown

19. Definition of ‘new’ poetry • ”for all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”(48B)!! • ”poetry is the image of man and nature” (51B) • importance of childhood and natural feelings • lack of complicated imagery • poetic diction is close to prose (cf. ”prosaisms”, 49B), though the metrical patterns are used to counterbalance the emotional content (53A)

20. The poet according to Wordsworth • ”is a man speaking to men” with ”more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul” (50B). • like ”a translator” with ”a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels” (51A) - the general passions of men • ”the poet thinks and feels in the spirit of the passions of men” (52B)

21. Poetry according to Wordsworth • ”poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge” • ”poetry is the first and last of all knowledge – it is as immortal as the heart of man” (52A) • general summary of poetic creation (3 phases): • ”it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity” (recollection of emotional responses in nature) • ”the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity disappears” (contemplation) • ”an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and [..] it is carried on.” (composition, that is, imaginative re-creation) 53B

24. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817) • formless book, mixture of autobiography, literary theory and metaphysical speculation • he reacts against neoclassicism, but does not totally agree with Wordsworth’s ideas on new poetry • good poem is to which we return (58B) • the metaphysical poets ”sacrificed the heart to the head”, the neoclassical ones ”both heart and head to point and drapery” (cf. Wit)

25. different faculties, not synonyms cf. fanciful mind (Wit?) mode of memory plays with fixities based on choice from the materials ready made by the law of association (58-9) – it is like the Lockean imagination it gives decoration to poetry (”drapery,” 62A) cf. Greek Phantasia, latin Imaginatio ”synthetic and magical power” (61B) it can fuse and build images into one whole primary imagination as an infinite divine creative power (”prime Agent”) secondary imagination is ”an echo of the former”: artistic creative power Coleridge on fancy vs. imagination

26. ”interest of novelty” and imagination incidents and agents are supernatural, ”or at least romantic” (59B) the immediate purpose of poetry is to give pleasure, the ultimate one is truth the poetic genius ”brings the whole soul of man into activity” by his imaginative power (e.g. ”Ancient Mariner”) ”faithful adherence to the truth of nature” ”charm of novelty” in ordinary life common language of common men prose with metre being superadded (?) Coleridge vs. Wordsworth on ‘new’ poetry

27. Coleridge’s new ideas:1. difference bw. the inner and the outer form • organic form • should be grown out/ created of the ideas in inspiration (e.g. ”Kubla Khan”) • delight of the whole • or outer shape • superadded features: metre, rhythm, rhymes • also parts of the whole 2. reference to the layers of our soul: the surface and the hidden layers (cf. ‘the conscious’ and ‘the unconscious’ for Freud)