Assignment of Wordsworth As A Critic

Name:- Ekta Jayswal

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Class:- M.A. Sem: 1

Roll No:- 13

Topic:- Wordsworth As A Critic

Paper No:- 3 [Literary Theory & Criticism]

Enrolment No:- PG 2069108420180027

Year:- 2017/19

Email ID:-ektajayswal12@gmail.com

Submitted to:- Dr. Dilip Barad
             S.B.Gardi English Department .        
                      M.K.B.U.
                     






**Wordsworth As A Critic**


# INTRODUCTION:-

o William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.

o With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791.

o In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at  Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy. Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.

o Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life.

o Wordsworth's second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in 1807. Wordsworth's central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth's Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radical ideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.

o In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England's poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.


# Wordswoth As An Inspired Critic:-

           Wordsworth was primarily a poet and not a critic. He has left behind him no comprehensive treatise on criticism. The bulk of his literary criticism is small. Though  the core of his literary criticism is as inspired as his poetry"—(J.A. Chapman). There is the same utter sincerity, earnestness, passion and truth in both. He knew about poetry in the real sense of the word, and he has not said even a single word about poetry, says Chapman, "which is not valuable, and worth thinking over".


# Herald of the Romantic Movement:-

               Wordsworth’s criticism is of far-reaching historical significance. When Wordsworth took to writing, it was the Neo-classical criticism, which held the day. Critics were pre-occupied with poetic genres; poetry was judged on the basis of rules devised by Aristotle and other ancients, and interpreted by the Italian and French critics. They cared for rules, for methods, for outward form, and had nothing to say about the substance, the soul of poetry..

                 Wordworth is the first critic to turn from the form of poetry to its substance; he is the first critic who builds a theory of poetry, and gives an account of the nature of the creative process. He is the first in many fields. His emphasis is on novelty, experiment, liberty, spontaneity, inspiration and imagination, as contrasted with the classical emphasis on authority, tradition, and restraint. His 'Preface' is an un-official manifesto of the English romantic movement. It is a great literary landmark which gave a new direction, consciousness and programme to English Romanticism. After Wordsworth had written, literary criticism could never be the same as before.

# Rejection of the Old:-


                 Wordsworth through his literary criticism demolishes the old and the faulty and opens out new vistas and new avenues. He discards the artificial and restricted forms of approved 18th century poetry. Disgusted by the, “gaudiness and inane phraseology”, of many modern writers, he castigates poets who, “separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.” Discarding formal finish and perfection, he stresses vivid sensation and spontaneous feeling. He says, “AH good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” “He discards Aristotelian doctrine. For him, the plot, or situation, is not the first thing. It is the feeling that matters”—(Scott-James)


# Stress on Simplicity:-

                 Reacting against the artificiality of 18th century poetry, he advocates simplicity both in theme and treatment. He advocates a deliberate choice of subjects from, “humble and rustic life”. Instead of being pre-occupied with nymphs and goddesses, he portrays the emotions of village girls and peasants. There is a healthy realism in his demand that the poet should use, “the language of common men”, the language of prose when prose is well-written, and that he should aim at keeping, “the reader in the company of flesh and blood.”

               There is, no doubt, in themselves, his views in this respect are open to criticism. Scott-James points out, the flesh and blood of a rustic is not more human than the flesh and blood of a townsman, and his emotions are not more profound. Besides, by confining himself exclusively to rustic life, he excluded many essential elements in human experience. In this way, he narrowed down his range. "His insistence on the use of a selection of language really used by men is always in danger of becoming trivial and mean." There is also, no doubt, that he is guilty of over-emphasis every now and then, and that it is easy to pick holes in his theories. Coleridge could easily demolish his theory of poetic diction and demonstrate that a selection of language as advocated by Wordsworth would differ in no way from the language of any other man of common sense.

# His Historical Significance :-

                             All the same, the historical significance of his criticism is very great. It served as a corrective to the artificial and inane phraseology of contemporary poetry and emphasized the value of a simpler and more natural language. By advocating simplicity in theme, he succeeded in enlarging the range of English poetry. He attacked what was old, out-dated and trivial, and created a taste for the new and the significant.
                 
                    He emphasized the true nature of poetry as an expression of emotion and passion, and so dealt a death blow to the dry intellectuality of contemporary poetry. In this way, he brought about a revolution in the theory of poetry, and made popular acceptance of the new poetry, the romantic poetry, possible.

# His Achievement:-


                  Wordsworth is the first English critic to consider at length, the nature of poetry, and the creative process. He is a great pioneer in this field. Wordsworth is a romantic in his emphasis on spontaneity, imagination, intuition and inspiration. But unlike the other romantics, he also lays stress on the element of thought in poetry.

                 He has a high conception of his own calling, and so knows that great poetry cannot be produced by a careless or thoughtless person. "Poems to which any value can be attached," he says, "were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply." Poetic process is a complex one. Great poetry is not produced on the spur of the moment. It is produced only when the original emotion is contemplated in tranquility, and the poet passions a new.

                   Wordsworth goes against the neo-classic view that poetry should both instruct and delight, when he stresses that the function of poetry is to give pleasure, a pleasure of a noble and exalted kind, pleasure which results from increased understanding and sympathy. If at all it teaches, it does so only indirectly, by purifying the emotions, uplifting the soul, and bringing it nearer to nature.

                  The credit for having democratized the conception of the poet must go to Wordsworth. According to Wordworth, the poet is essentially a man who differs from other men not in kind, but only in degree. He is essentially a man speaking to men. He has certain gifts in a higher degree than others. He has a more lively sensibility, a more comprehensive soul, greater powers of observation, imagination and communication. He is also a man who has thought long and deep. Others also have these gifts, but the poet has them in a higher degree. Wordsworth emphasizes his organic oneness as also the need for him of emotional identification with other men. It will not do for him to sit high and alone in his ivory tower; he must come out into the light of common day, share in the joys and sorrows of common men and women, and write for their pleasure.

#  Wordsworth's Important works on criticism: Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,
[1800, 1802, 1815]....

  **Main ideas of his criticism:-

1. The chief aim in the composition of poems in the Lyrical Ballads has been to choose ‘incidents and situations from common life’ and to relate them in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time throw over them a colouring of imagination, whereby the ordinary things would be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect. WW insists that if the subject is properly chosen, it will naturally lead the poet to feelings whose appropriate expression will have dignity, beauty and metaphorical vitality.

2. He has chosen ‘incidents and situations from common life’ as subjects of his poetryfor the following reasons: in humble and rustic life feelings are freely and frankly expressed for these are simple, the manners of the rustics are not sophisticated and hence are more conducive to an understanding of human nature, in rustic life, human passions are connected to nature and so they are more noble and permanent.
                        He has used the language of the rustics because such men hourly communicate with the best objects of nature from which the best part of language is derived, and because of their low rank in society, they are less under the influence of social vanity. They convey their feelings in a simple and unelaborated language. Such language is far more philosophical than the arbitrary language used by the poets of the day.

3. The theme which dominates most of Wordsworth’s criticism, and which he pursues most consistently is his argument against poetic diction. The immediate object of his attack was the ‘gaudiness and inane phraseology’ and the ‘vague, glossy and unfeeling language’ of contemporary poets. Wordsworth is arguing against the idea of ‘poetic diction’ current throughout the 18thc, the idea that some modes of diction were best avoided in poetry, but that other modes were especially suitable.
                     He argues that to separate poetry from ordinary speech is to separate it from human life. Poets confer honour neither on themselves or their works by using a sophisticated diction. In fact it alienates human sympathy. Simple rural people are less restrained and artificial in their feelings and their utterance, and those feelings are at one with their environment. Expanding his apologia for his rejection of poetic diction, he says that there neither is, nor be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition, and repeats that the language of poetry should as far as possible be ‘a selection of the language really spoken by men’. If true taste and feeling are applied to the process of selection then what results will be firmly distinguished from the ‘vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’ and if meter is ‘superadded’ then it will be even better.


# Conclusion:-


                  We can do no better than conclude this account of the achievement of Wordsworth as a critic with the words of Rene Wellek: “Wordsworth thus holds a position in the history of criticism which must be called ambiguous or transitional. He inherited from neo-classicism a theory of the imitation of nature to which he gives, however, a specific social twist: he inherited from the 18th century a view of poetry as passion and emotion which he again modified by his description of the poetic process as. “recollection in tranquility”. He takes up rhetorical ideas about the effect of poetry but extends and amplifies them into a theory of the social effects of literature, binding society in a spirit of love. But he also adopts, in order to meet the exigencies of his mystical experiences, a theory of poetry in which imagination holds the central place as a power of unification and ultimate insight into the unity of the world. Though Wordsworth left wily a small body of criticism, it is rich in survivals, suggestions, anticipations and personal insights.”


# Work Cited By:- 


* googleweblight.com*

*educationcing.blogspot.in*

*www.engliterarium.com*




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