Download The Romantics

Study Guide 07
The Romantics
01 English Romanticism
i. About
 Awakening of sensibility in the mid 18th century
 Sensibility:

Sensation over perception

Capacity for refined emotion

Sensitivity to nature

Sympathy for human suffering

Impression; individualism
 The rise of (English) Romanticism:
 Love of liberty, general independence: Neoclassical rules were never going to be
followed to the letter
 Translation of Longinus’ On the Sublime into French; widely read in England;
poets influenced by the emphasis on transport and rapture
 Spirit of free thinking inspired by French Revolution (1789-1799); American War
of Independence (1775-1783)
 unTha nguoi dung noi se yeu minh toi mai thoi thi gio day toi se vui hon. Gio
nguoi lac loi buoc chan ve noi xa xoi, cay dang chi rieng minh toi...
http://nhattruongquang.0catch.com

 Men of genius (Coleridge and Wordsworth) voiced their protest against
 Tha nguoi dung noi se yeu minh toi mai thoi thi gio day toi se vui hon. Gio
nguoi lac loi buoc chan ve noi xa xoi, cay dang chi rieng minh toi...
http://nhattruongquang.0catch.com
 unofficial manifesto for Romanticism
 Characteristics:
 Romantic criticism ignores (neoclassical) rules of judgement; the worth of the
work is judged by the impression it leaves upon the individual
 Concerned with the fundamentals: the essence of poetry, the creative process;
matters of style, genre and diction (NC) are unimportant
 Imagination and emotion are emphasised over reason, good sense and imitation
 The ultimate function of poetry is pleasure; it instructs (utile) through pleasure
 Creativity: criticism becomes a creative process in itself
Study Guide 07
02 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
i. About
 One of England’s greatest poet-critics
 Critical works are scattered and fragmentary; mostly
contained in Biographia Literaria and Lectures on
Shakespeare and Other Poets
ii. Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets
 Impressionistic approach to Shakespeare; practical
criticism
 Believed that Shakespeare’s genius lies in the playwright’s
‘sympathy that enables him to identify himself with his
characters at will’
 Formulated his dictum that the aim of poetry is to provide pleasure
 Every work of art is an organic, unified whole, subject to only the laws of its own
existence
iii. Biographia Literaria
 Emphasis on lit aesthetics and lit theory
 Influences:
 William Wordsworth: Coleridge met Wordsworth when he was 24; his interest in
the power of imagination was influenced by Wordsworth
 Based on this influence, he formulated the idea that fancy and imagination are two
distinct faculties (although Wordsworth considered them to be the same thing)
 It was the union of deep feeling and profound thought, the fine balance of truth in
observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed; and above
all the original gift of the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the
ideal world around forms, incidents and situations, of which, for the common view,
custom had bedimmed all the lustre and dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops
 Associationist Psychology: Mechanist view of the formulation of human character
 Objects perceived by the senses; these impressions are then formed into simple ideas,
which are then compounded into complex ideas
 Pleasures are then associated with certain actions and objects; these actions are
repeated, and then form one’s moral character
 Thus one only needs to be a passive recipient of sense-perceptions for full
development
 German Idealism: Kantian view: Imagination as esemplastic power
 The imagination moulds and re-creates; art is then not an imitation of nature, but a
re-creation
Study Guide 07






Beauty is not objective; it is the inward soul’s projection of itself onto external
objects
Imagination and fancy:
 Imagination split into primary and secondary; both distinguished from fancy
 Primary: receiving sense-perception from the outside world
 ‘…the living power and prime agent of all human perception’
 Secondary: reshapes sense-perceptions into objects of beauty, a ‘magical, synthetic
power’ that is at the heart of all poetic creation
 ‘…identical with the former in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree and in
the mode of its operation…it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate; or…it
struggles to idealise and unify’
 Fancy: not a creative power; it can combine disparate elements into beautiful objects;
but it cannot unify
 ‘…has no other counters to play with but fixities and definites…no other than a mode of
memory emancipated from the order of time and space; and blended with and modified
by that empirical phenomenon of the will which [one[ expresses by the word
choice…but equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all its materials ready
made from the law of association’
The function of poetry/organic unity
 To give pleasure
 In an ideal society, truth might be the ultimate end (thus giving pleasure)
 But in our imperfect society, pleasure in itself can be an immediate end without
regard for truth or morality
 A poem must have organic unity; while pleasure can be drawn from each part, it
must correspond to or assist in the transmittance of pleasure of the whole
 Ornaments cannot be stuck on for their own sake if they do not serve the purpose of
the whole (pleasure superadded)
 Thus, pleasure > instruction (in a sense, dulce > utile)
Poem and poetry
 Poetry is the creative activity of the poet’s mind; a poem is merely one of the forms of
its expression
Willing suspension of disbelief
‘the poet does not require us to be awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves
to a dream; and this, too, with our eyes open…’
Study Guide 07
03 William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
i. About
 One of the greatest English poets; friend and
contemporary of Coleridge
 Primarily a poet; critical work is contained in the
numerous prefaces to The Lyrical Ballads; the 1802
Preface is taken as the standard
 The Preface is considered to be the unofficial
manifesto of Romanticism
 Gave the movement momentum and direction
 Considered the first critical account of the process
of poetic creation
ii. Preface to The Lyrical Ballads
 Wordsworth didn’t set out to lay out a systematic
theory of poetry; only to offer his readers an
introduction on the type of poetry he produced
 Poetic diction: Felt that the language of verse should not be differentiated from
everyday language
 ‘To separate poetry from ordinary language is to separate it from ordinary life’
 A plea for sympathy in theme and treatment
 The subject of poetry can be found in everyday life
 For Wordsworth, everyday = rustic, pastoral life and language, freed from vulgarities
 The ‘poor’ convey their emotions more sincerely and directly
 There also cannot be an essential difference between prose and verse
 The metre of verse only serves to augment the enjoyment of its reading
 Overall the type of language used must suit the subject, and the undercurrent of
emotions related to the treatment of that subject
 Function of poetry: solely to give pleasure
 An exalted pleasure from increased knowledge
 In terms of knowledge, Wordsworth considered poetry to be superior to philosophy,
history and science
 Poetry is the most philosophical art
 Poetry complements science by adding feeling to its truths
 Poetry gives pleasure because:
i) it imitates nature well, and a thing well-imitated causes pleasure
ii) it increases the reader’s knowledge of the primary nature of man
iii) it arouses sympathy; sympathy brings inner satisfaction
iv) it increases the reader’s knowledge of the essence of man and nature
Study Guide 07



The poet: Differs from other men only in the degree of his gifts, and not his inherent
nature
 In conveying emotions that the poet himself has not experienced, he must live
through the characters, in order for the language to seem natural
Poetic creation: ‘all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’
 An often misconstrued quote
 Does not refer to a gush of raw emotion, but rather emotion modified and mediated
by contemplation
 Four stages:
 i) observation
 ii) recollection
 iii) contemplation
 iv) imaginative excitement of past emotions
Poetic taste: to create taste, the poet must overcome the prejudices and apathy of his
readers
 Must make his readers sympathise with even lowly subjects, and teach them
humility, so as to purify their souls
 Taste is an active process whereby the reader cooperates with the poet to be
transported into an exalted state