What Shortcomings does Arnold find in Chaucer and Burns as Poetical Classics?

Arnold’s “The study of Poetry” can be taken as a kind of legislative criticism where he puts up his belief as a literary critic. He proclaims that Chaucer and Burn are not the great classics. Now, the question comes why does Arnold put Chaucer and Burn outside the domain of classic writers? To solve this riddle, we should first know his idea of a classic.

According to Arnold, poetry is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Great poetry alone posses the power to sustain, console, delight and to interpret life to us. He thus sets high standard for great poetry. In order to be a classic the poet must be able to fill us with such strength and joy that will guide us in our life. He suggests a practical method for finding a true classic. It is his famous “Touchstone Method.” One has to take specimen of poetry of the high quality and apply them to the poetry under judgment. When we judge a contemporary piece of poetry by such touchstone we can determine whether it can be justifiably turned as the product of a genuine classic.

Accordingly the best poetry is characterized by truth and seriousness. As regards the manner and style, the best poetry is characterized by superiority of diction and of movement. Thus according to Arnold, a poet is to be regarded as a classic if he fulfils the conditions stated above.

Arnold is of the opinion that many writers are considered to be classics but actually they are false classics because their poetry does not live upto the high standard of poetic art attained by such great masters as Homer, Milton and Shakespeare.

Arnold at first applies his Touchstone Method on Chaucer. He quotes a few line from Chaucer and then compares them with a line from Dante and comes to the conclusion that the poetry of Chaucer does not have the account of the classics. At first Arnold praises on Chaucer’s poetical performance and poetical achievement. But he denies to Chaucer the status of poetical classic. In his opinion, Chaucer does not possess high poetic seriousness.

Arnold has high praise for Chaucer’s poetical performance. The poetry of Chaucer is far superior to the French romance poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Chaucer’s power of fascination is enduring.The substance of Chaucer’s poetry, his view of things and his riticism of life has largeness, freedom, shrewdness and kindliness. His poetry is criticism of life and it has truth of substance or matter. Chaucer is a perpetual source of good sense. Yet he does not have that high seriousness which Homer had, which his successor like Shakespeare, Milton etc had.

Chaucer does not pose himself as stern moralist, as social reformer. Chaucer has a genial humor devoid of spite and cynicism. Chaucer endeavored to picture life truthfully without either exalting unduly or demeaning unnecessarily any of his characters.

In the poetry of Burns too, Arnold does not find the accent of high seriousness. The poetry of Burns has truth of matter and truth of manner but not the accent of the poetic virtue of the highest master. Arnold concludes the essay by pointing out the case of Burns, how a personal estimate of a poet can mislead us and how we can correct such an estimate by using the poetry of the great classics as a sort of touchstone, just as we would correct the historic estimate of a poet by the same means.

By such means we can derive the benefit of being able clearly to feel and deeply to enjoy the best, the truly classic in poetry.

T . S . Eliot's Theory of Depersonalization

The theory of depersonalization or impersonality is T.S.Eliot’s remarkable gift in criticism. He holds that the poet and the poem are two separate things. Eliot explains his theory in two phases; “the relation of the poet to the past,” and “the relation of the poem to its author.’

As for the first phase, he says that the past is never dead; it lives in the present. And if we approach a poet with an open mind, “We shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.” Again if he is a great poet, he alters his work in no small scale. So what is a sort of flowing out and in. But while in giving he asserts his individuality, in taking he has to repress it. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” According to him it is the duty of the poet to discard the touch of personality in his work: and as a result a new form will come out from the fusion of the past and the present.

This brings the second aspect of his theory of depersonalization in which Eliot shows that a poet’s greatness does’ lie in putting his personality into his work. A poet may have personal liking, disliking or may fell interested in anything, but he should not put it into his poetry. Rather a poet should have varied feelings which are at liberty and therefore will enter into new combinations.

It is not necessary that these feelings will be his own rather those of others will also do. For his mind is just like a catalyst that combines them into a new shape ad remains unaffected at a time. Of course, it may partly use of the poet’s on experience. “but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers. There may be impressions and experiences that are grave concern for a man, but they should not take any place in the poetry.

So, what comes is that “Poetry is not a turning case of emotion, but an escape from emotion. It is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” So the poem, not the poet, is the focal point of “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation.’

Wordsworth's Theory of Poetic Sensibility

Wordsworth used the phrase "organic sensibility" to refer to natural mental capacities. Wordsworth writes, "an accurate taste in poetry, and in all other arts...is an acquired taste, which can only be produced by severe thought, and a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition." So he seems to say that, while writing poetry might come naturally, reading and understanding it doesn't. He also is implying that most good poetry is beyond the comprehension of those without a background in how to read it, and that people of less discriminating taste can't be sensible of which poetry is good and which is bad.

He's describing something profound, and in using the word sense, he seems to invoke many of sensibility's meanings: perception, emotional consciousness, sensitiveness. But this use also seems to broaden the definition of "emotional connection to works of literature, music and art" to include nature.

What Does Wordsworth Mean by "Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful feelings"

By “Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, Wordsworth opines that poetry is a matter of mood and inspiration. Poetry evolves from the feelings of the poet. Poetry’s source is the feeling in the heart, not the ideas of the intellect. A poet cannot write under pressure. In this regard, poetry flows out of his heart in a natural and fluent manner. Deep emotion is the basic condition of poetry; powerful feelings and emotions are fundamental. Without them great poetry can not be written. But T. S. Eliot in his Tradition and the Individual Talent rejects Wordsworth's definition of poetry and holds the idea that a writer should be impersonal and his writings should be devoid of personal emotion and feelings.

Emotion Recollected in Tranquility

To begin with Wordsworth’s words, “I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” At first glance, these two statements seem contradictory but Wordsworth’s theory of poetry involved the fusion of the two statements. In a sense powerful feelings and profound thought make poetry perfect. Wordsworth told that the poet can’t rely on sensibility alone. He has to be a person who has also thought long and deeply. After that, a calm mind is equally necessary to furnish the past/ previous thoughts/ feelings.

At first, the poet observes some object, character or situation. It sets up powerful emotions in his mind. The poet doesn’t react immediately. He allows it to sink into his mind along with the feelings which it has excited. Then comes the recollection of the emotion, at a later moment. The emotion is recollected in tranquility. There might be a time lapse of several years. Thus poetry originates in emotion recollected in tranquility and so ultimately the product of the original free flow of that emotion.

Wordsworth's Views on Poetic Truth

Aristotle was the fist who declared poetic truth to be superior to historical truth. He called poetry the most philosophic of all writings. Wordsworth agrees with Aristotle in this matter. Poetry is given an exalted position by Wordsworth in such a way that it treats the particular as well as the universal. Its aim is universal truth. Poetry is true to nature. Wordsworth declares poetry to be the “image” or “man and nature”. A poet has to keep in mind that his end (objective) is to impart pleasure. He declares poetry will adjust itself to the new discoveries and inventions of science. It will create a new idiom for the communication of new thoughts. But the poet’s truth is such that sees into heart of things and enables others to see the same. Poetic truth ties all mankind with love and a sense of oneness.

Samuel Johnson's Views of Shakespeare's use of Quibbles

Samuel Johnson in his “Preface to Shakespeare” talks of quibble to refer the reader to a particular (defect/attitude of Shakespeare) Shakespearean attitude in writing. A quibble is a sort of pun or a verbal trick that, to Johnson, holds some “malignant power” over one’s mind as it was o Shakespeare. Johnson says that Shakespeare did not spare a single quibble that would come to his way and he would even forget to pursue his own course of action in his drama no matter how profound and grave it is, if he found a quibble. In Johnson’s wording, “A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapors are to the traveler” and consequently it misleads the follower. It is the irresistible fascination of quibble that does not let Shakespeare’s attention be on his expected excellence and so the work grows dull or loses the usual ripeness. Comparing the force of quibble to the myth of golden apple and so the work grows dull or loses the usual ripeness. Comparing the force of quibble to the myth of golden apple and again to the beauty of “the fatal Cleopetra”. Johnson basically tried to anticipate the would be glory of Shakespeare that he lost only by picking up the quibble/ giving the quibble sufficient room I his writing.

William Wordsworth's Coparative Study of Science and Poetry in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, as a Romantic poet, in his Preface to lyrical Ballads, considers poetry to be superior to science. He shows that the scientist studies only the appearance of things while the poet investigates the inner reality of human soul. The realization of the unity of nature and man gives absolute pleasure to the poet. A scientist is devoid of this pleasure; he enjoys pleasure in solitude whereas poetic truth can be shared by all. The poet’s appeal, says Wordsworth, is to the intellect as well as to the heart of man, unlike the appeal of the scientist’s truth, which is to the intellect alone.

Wordsworth thinks that the time may come when science will change and alter the very material conditions of life. When that happens, the poet will give feeling and emotional coloring to the factual achievement of science and present it in a vivid form to the reader. The dry and dull skeleton of science will be given life and vividness, flesh and blood through the art of poetry.

The Victorian poet Mathew Arnold in his critical writing The Study of Poetry, echoes Wordsworth’s view that science would remain incomplete without poetry and quotes Wordsworth: poetry is “the breath and finer spirit of knowledge”. In a fact the atmosphere of sensation only matters and he takes his surroundings for his subject. Even the ‘objects of the science” are put to poetic sensation and the discoveries of the chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist will also be the objects of the poet’s art. Not only that the poet will aid the science to ring it before all in a decisive form in the coming days with its “divine spirit”. Thus Wordsworth elevates the position of poet over the man of science and so says, “it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

William Wordsworth's Comparative Study of Science and Poetry in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, as a Romantic poet, in his Preface to lyrical Ballads, considers poetry to be superior to science. He shows that the scientist studies only the appearance of things while the poet investigates the inner reality of human soul. The realization of the unity of nature and man gives absolute pleasure to the poet. A scientist is devoid of this pleasure; he enjoys pleasure in solitude whereas poetic truth can be shared by all. The poet’s appeal, says Wordsworth, is to the intellect as well as to the heart of man, unlike the appeal of the scientist’s truth, which is to the intellect alone.

Wordsworth thinks that the time may come when science will change and alter the very material conditions of life. When that happens, the poet will give feeling and emotional coloring to the factual achievement of science and present it in a vivid form to the reader. The dry and dull skeleton of science will be given life and vividness, flesh and blood through the art of poetry.

The Victorian poet Mathew Arnold in his critical writing The Study of Poetry, echoes Wordsworth’s view that science would remain incomplete without poetry and quotes Wordsworth: poetry is “the breath and finer spirit of knowledge”. In a fact the atmosphere of sensation only matters and he takes his surroundings for his subject. Even the ‘objects of the science” are put to poetic sensation and the discoveries of the chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist will also be the objects of the poet’s art. Not only that the poet will aid the science to ring it before all in a decisive form in the coming days with its “divine spirit”. Thus Wordsworth elevates the position of poet over the man of science and so says, “it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

Johnson's comments on the Violation of Shakespeare's Three Unities in his Dramas

The neo-classical critics raised the question of unites concerning the free dramatic expression of the Elizabethans, particularly Shakespeare. Since the critics of the age showed allegiance to the rules of the classical writers and critics like Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle and Horace, they put their late writers in the classical mould of (of standard) writing. Whoever fitted nice, passed for valid and if otherwise invalid. Shakespeare with all his natural capabilities was brought to the scale of judgment. Here Johnson in his “Preface to Shakespeare” comes to defend him and shows the inanity of observing the unites of place and time but action.

Among the unites, Johnson found only the unity of action justified by reason since it is needed to present the plot as an inseparable whole. But he founds the grounds for the unites of time and place to be wholly misleading.

He first echoes the objection raiser, “The necessity of observing the unites of time and place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The unities hold it impossible, that an action of months and years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours. Fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of place. The spectator who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandra, can not suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him. He knows with certainty that he has not changed his place, and he knows hat place cannot change itself.”

To this Johnson answers very tactfully. Johnson says there should not be any consideration for the clock while the mind is “Wandering in ecstasy “ and an hour can happily be allowed to pervade a century. And the unities of time and place come to notice when the spectator enter with sense not imagination. And Johnson rightly says, “Time is of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.”

As for Shakespeare’s free style writing, Johnson comments that it is not possible to decide and useless to inquire, if he rejected it by design or deviated from them by happy ignorance. What he said of Shakespeare is conjectural and Shakespeare’s ignorance of the two unites: place and time was by chance but later he deliberately practiced it. He was probably indifferent to counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics. But Shakespeare to Johnson was very much strict to the unity of action and other two had either been unknown by him or not observed. “Such violations” according to Johnson “of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare.”

Arnold’s Concept of Poetry as a Criticism of Life

Mathew Arnold’s importance in the history of English literary criticism is acknowledged by one and all. His greatness lies in the fact that he had a definite aim in writing poetry. He clearly stated this aim and tied to conform to his aim. It was “a criticism of life”. By “criticism of life” he meant “noble and profound application of ideas to life.” It means that poetry is not for affording pleasure and creating beauty. It must have a high deal. This ideal is to present life in such a way that it may illumine us and inspire us. In other words Arnold wanted to use poetry for making man good. The ideas he wanted to apply were moral ideas.

Arnold had a very high conception of poetry. The best poetry, he said, is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. The author of any literary piece is expected to be man of high personal experience with all his mental and intellectual faculties highly developed by means of his vast reading and deep thinking.

The phrase “criticism of life” is elaborated by Arnold with the phrase “application of ideas to life.” Poetry is an “application of ideas to life.” The more powerful the application of ideas, the greater will be the poetry. We understand what Arnold means by the phrase. He means that poetry is an interpretational life as the poet experiences it and knows it bringing into play his intellect and mind matured by experience and reading. According to Arnold, poetry is not however, merely as intellectual exercise, it is subject to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

As if poetry is a criticism of life, the laws, fixed by the poetic the poetic truth and poetic beauty, insist on one condition. This condition of the quality of “high seriousness” when comes out of the deepest sincerity with which the poet feels for the subject. And this quality of “high seriousness” is obviously found in the poetry of Dante, Homer and Milton and this is the quality which Arnold says gives their poetry its power. From Milton he quotes the famous line:-

Nor live thy life nor hate; but what thou livest

Live well; how ling or short, permit to heaven

He says poetry however deals with ideas and not facts, and without poetry science will remain incomplete. Much of religion and philosophy may be replaced by poetry. Arnold believes that the highest type of poetry should deal with moral ideas not so much in its didactic character. The moral is used in its widest sense. The very question, how to live, is according to Arnold a moral idea. Arnold declares that, moral, should not be interpreted in a narrow sense. It means a code of behavior or a system of thought. Finally, Arnold holds the view that a “poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral idea is a poetry of indifference towards life.

Criticism also means how a creative artist reacts to his experiences and gives expression to his ideal attitude to those experiences. Arnold is of the opinion that the qualities of high type of poetry can be found in its matter and substance and in its manner and style.

However Arnold’s concept of poetry is really too high and serious and in this lies its limitations. From the very first Arnold is against art for art’s sake. Many English critics have disagreed with Arnold’s statement. T.S.Eliot himself a good poet says that Arnold’s view is “frigid to any one who has felt the full surprise and elevation of a new experience of poetry.”

However in the last word we can say that poetry is a criticism of life. The critics’ duty is to examine poetry and life at the same time. As we understand Mathew Arnold had a broad conception of criticism including religion, culture and education as well as poetry. In this wider perspective the aim of criticism is “in all branches of knowledge theology, philosophy, history, art science to see the object as in itself it really is.”

Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads as a manifesto of Romantic Movement

Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads declares the dawn of English Romantic Movement. Wordsworth and Coleridge, with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, break away with the neo-classical tendencies in poetry. As the reading people are not familiar with his new type of poetry, Wordsworth puts forward a preface to this book. In this preface, he tells us about the form and contents of this new type of poetry.

Wordsworth, in the beginning, states the necessity of bringing about a revolution in the realm of poetry as the Augustan poetry has become cliché. He painfully notices that the Eighteenth century poets have separated poetry from the grasp of common people. He resolves to liberate this poetry from the shackles of so- called classical doctrines. He, in collaboration with his friend Coleridge, begins to write poem for the people of all classes. Wordsworth thinks that the language of the Augustan poetry is highly artificial and sophisticated. That is why he suggests a new language for Romantic poetry. This is why he suggests a new language for Romantic poetry. This is why he suggests a new language for Romantic poetry. These attempt chiefly deals with Wordsworth’s views of poetry.

Wordsworth thinks that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. To him, the intensity of feelings is more important than the form.

To make poetry life like, he wants to use the language of common people as the common people express their feeling unfeignedly. But he tells about a selection, because common people use gross and unrefined language. So, he will purify the language of rustic people until it is ready for use.

Wordsworth seems to contradict his own views as he prefers a selection to the original language spoken by the rustic people.

T. S. Eliot, in his The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, objects to Wordsworth’s view. Eliot tells that a poet should not imitate the language of a particular class because he ought to have a language of his own. Eliot’s view gains ground as Wordsworth in his later poems, fails to use his prescribed language. His diction is, in fact peculiar to him.

But Wordsworth’s definitions of poetry ad the poet are unique. He maintains that poetry is more philosophical than any other branch of knowledge. He likes the poet to a prophet who is endowed with a greater knowledge of life and nature.

The neo-classical poets consider the province of poetry to be the world of fictions. But for Wordsworth the province of poetry is the world of truth, not a world of make-believe. Wordsworth like Samuel Johnson believes that only “the manifestations of general truth” can please all people. That is why he rejects the hackneyed poetic style of the Augustan period.

Wordsworth differs with the neo-classical writers in his belief about the process of poetry. The neo-classical writers think that the poet’s mind is a sensitive but passive recorder of a natural phenomenon. But Wordsworth strongly opposes this view and thinks that the mind of the poet is never a passive recorder. In his view, the poet’s mind half creates the external world which he perceives. The external world is thus, in some degree, the very creation of human mind. Wordsworth seems to establish the fact that the poet’s mind and the external nature are both interlinked and interdependent. Wordsworth unlike the classicists can not separate the mind which suffers from the mind which composes.

Wordsworth points out the common characteristics of both poetry and science. But he places poetry over science for the fact that the large part of poetry is based on imagination. He beautifully discovers that science only appeal to intellect while poetry appeals to heart. For this, the pleasures of science are shared by few while the pleasures of poetry are open to all. Again the truth of science is subject to change while poetry does not suffer from such threat.

Wordsworth breaks with the classical theory of poetry when he advocates for the intensity of emotion. To him, reason is not at all important. This is a subjective view.

It cannot be said that Wordsworth is absolutely right in his theory of poetry. But it must be recognized that his views are innovative and creative.

His rejection of classical doctrines leads to the creation of a new type of poetry which prefers him emotions to reason. As a result a group of talented poet’s has emerged in the province of English poetry. At the same time, he has contributed to the field of literary criticism. If Blake is considered to be the precursor of romantic poetry, Wordsworth and Coleridge are the two early exponents of romantic poetry. And it is wise of Wordsworth to form a ground for this new poetry through the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's Glorification of Rustic and the Ordinary in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballad

In his Preface to the Lyrical Ballad, Wordsworth tells that he had chosen low and rustic life for treatment in his poems. He chose this life because, according to him, in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soul in which they can attain their maturity. In humble and rustic life the essential passions of the persons are less under restraint and therefore express themselves in a plainer and more emphatic language.

Elementary Feeling

Wordsworth also says that the humble and rustic life and the elementary feelings of human beings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity and can therefore be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and because of the necessary character of rural occupations, those manners are more easily comprehended. Finally in humble and rustic life, the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent form of nature.

Living in Countryside

Thus in Wordsworth’s opinion, person living in the country side and pursuing rural occupations are the best fitted for portrayal in poetry because these people live in an environment which is more favorable to the growth and development of the essential passions of the human heart and because in this environment people do no suffer from any inhabitations and therefore speak a plainer and more forceful language. These people lead simple lives and their feelings are of an elementary kind. They do not have the vanity which people in the cities possess. These people live in contract with the beautiful and permanent objects of nature (mountains, streams, trees, flowers etc.) This contract favors the natural maturing of the feelings and passions in the hearts of these people.

Simplicity

Wordsworth collects all the traces of vivid excitement which are to be found in the pastoral world. Simplicity is to be the keynote of his theme as also of his style. He is to treat the things of everyday life, to open out “the soul of little and familiar things.” In We are Seven , the poet talks with a little girl who tells him of her brothers and sisters. In another poem, a female vagrant tells the artless tale of her life. Another poem concerns a shepherd, “a Crael by name,” and another pertains to a leech-gatherer. Thus Wordsworth shows that even in the poorest lives there is matter for poetry, schemes that can stir the imagination and move the emotions. Thus Wordsworth democratizes poetry. This democratic outlook is something new in poetry. He seeks his subject among forsake women, old men in distress, children and crazy persons, in whom the primary instincts are emotions showed themselves in their simplest and most recognizable form.

Corrupted World

It is to a large extent, the corruption of civilized society which makes Wordsworth choose his subject from humble and rustic life. In choosing them from rustic rather than urban life he is influenced, no doubt, by the fact that he himself is country bred. He is convinced that among humble and rustic folk, the essential passions of the heart fid a better place to mature in and are more durable. There is the closer intimacy which isolation forces on rural households; there is the sharing of common tasks and even, in the shepherds’ life, of common dangers. There are other virtues also like contentment, neighborliness, ad charity, which can flourish in the kindly society of the country.

Coleridge’s View

Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria analyses Wordsworth’s theory regarding the choice of theme. Coleridge thinks differently on this subject. He does not believe that characters should necessarily be chosen from low and rustic life. He does not believe that a close contact with the beautiful and permanent objects of nature produces any wholesome effect on the rustic persons. He does not even believe that Wordsworth has followed his own theory loosely in his poems. He does not believe that rustic life necessarily helps the formation of healthy feelings and a reflected mind. In fact, the negation of rustic life put as many obstacles in the way of this formation as the sophistication of city life does.

Coleridge has certainly argued his case well. But there are certain considerations which he has not taken into account. Wordsworth’s aim is to find the best soil for the essential passions. By avoiding artifice, he looks for simplicity. He has found poet extravagantly pre-occupied with the affairs of nymphs and goddesses. He therefore wants to turn his attention to the emotions of village girls and of peasants. Wordsworth is not trying to unite familiar anecdotes on nursery tales; he is seeking the fundamentals of human life by contemplating it in its simplest forms.

Yet the fact remains that Wordsworth’s theory has a limiting effect on poetry. The democratization of the theme of poetry is certainly to be welcomed, but to confine the poet only to humble and rustic life is to debar him from the rest of life. Human life is very wide and humble. Rural life is only one sphere of human life.

So, in conclusion, we can say that Wordsworth’s theory of language is not without its faults. But at the same time its merit cannot be ignored. It has a far reaching importance. It changes the tendency of having much flown diction for poetry.

What does T. S. Eliot mean by Tradition and Historical Sense in his Tradition and Individual Talent?

In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He also signifies the importance of the tradition. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting, something intellectual and something vital for literary conception.

Tradition, according to Eliot, is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.

According to Eliot tradition is a living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in forming (shaping) the present. To Eliot tradition is bound up with historical sense of a poet or writer. Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost or invalid. Rather it has a function in the present.

It exits with the present. It exerts its influence in our ideas, thoughts and consciousness. This is historical sense. It is an awareness not only of the past ness of the past but the presence of the past. On this sense the past is our contemporary as the present is.

Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present live side by side in the space. Thus it is spatial.

Then Eliot holds that not only the past influences the present but the present, too, influences the past. To prove this idea, he conceives of all literature as a total, indivisible order. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature is like the arrival of a member or a new relative or a new acquaintance. Its arrival and presence brings about a readjustment of the previous relationship of the old members. A new work takes its place in the order. Its arrival and inclusion modifies the order and relationship among all works. The order is then modified. A new work of art influences all the existing- literary work, as a new relative influences the old members of a family. It is this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present. The past is modified by the present also in the sense that we can look at the past literature always through ever renewing perceptive of the present.

A new work of art can not be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition. The value of a work depends on how well it is adjusted into the order of existing literary works. No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You can not value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.

A work of art has two dimensions- it is at once personal and universal. It is an individual composition, but at the same time, its inclusion into tradition determines its worth and universal appeal. A writer must be aware that he belongs to a larger tradition and there is always an impact of tradition on him. Individual is an element formed by and forming the culture to which he belongs. He should surrender his personality to something larger and more significant.

In his conscious cultivation of historical sense, a writer reduces the magnification of personal self, which leads to depersonalization and impersonal act.

When a writer is aware the historical sense, it does not mean that he is influenced by the past or his own self. Rather the writer should minimize the importance of his personal self, which will lead him to depersonalization and impersonal act.

Tradition is a living stream. It is not a lump or dead mass.But the main current does not always flow through the most noted authoress.

Eliot regrets that tradition in English world of letters is used in prerogative sense. This is one reason of the undeveloped critical sense of the English nation. They are too individualistic on intellectual habits.

Eliot criticizes the English intellectuals. According to Eliot to the English intellectual tradition is something that should be avoided. They give much more importance on individualism and are critical about the historical sense or tradition.

Like Arnold , Eliot views tradition as something living. For both the word “tradition” implies growth.Eliot recalls Edmund Burke what Burke did for political thought, by glorifying the idea of inheritance, Eliot has done for English literary criticism.Burke, famous English politician, gave emphasis on the experience of the past in politics. In the same Eliot also gives emphasis on the past regarding English criticism.

Tradition does not mean uncritical imitation of the past. Nor does it mean only erudition. A writer draws on only the necessary knowledge of tradition. He must use his freedom according to his needs. He cannot be completely detached.Often the most original moments of a work of art echo the mind of earlier writers. Though it sounds paradoxical it is true.It is paradoxical but true that even the most original writings sometimes reflect the thinking of the past or earlier writers. So, there is nothing which is absolutely original.

A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art.

Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.

Wordsworth’s Defination of Poet and Poetry as Expressed in his Preface Lyrical Ballads

In Preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth expresses his opinion about the function of a poet and the subject matter of poetry. He rejects the classical concept in his attitude towards poet and poetry. He holds a romantic view in both the cases.

The Neo- classical poets have expressed their allegiance/ obedience to the classical rules as set by Aristotle. According to the rules the poets are to depend on reason and arguments. There is no scope for any imaginative expression of feeling and emotion. Therefore, the subjects of the classical poets don’t consent the common human feelings. They are of separate type reflecting only the lives of the Aristocratic people of the society. William Wordsworth has painfully observed this sad picture of English poetry. Therefore he makes an attempt to extend the area of poetry by including subjective elements and describing the natural objects that are contributing silently to our lives and supplying different feelings to our senses and sensibilities.

Poetry

William Wordsworth says that he has selected incidents and situations of common life. He describes them by selection of incidents and situations of common life. He describes them by selection of language really used by men. In the past this ordinary life of the ordinary people has never been a subject of poetry. For the first time he democratizes poetry and gives a universal appeal to it. People living in the modern cities are very much artificial and far away from the simplicity of nature. Therefore, they don’t express the reality of human life. They suffer from social vanity. Artificiality predominates in them. But the villagers are very simple and free from social vanity. Wordsworth says that in Lyrical Ballads, humble and rustic life has been chosen as the theme of poetry because the essential passions of the heart find a better soul in which they can attain their maturity in the humble state of life. Wordsworth comments that humble and rustic life holds simplicity, serenity and tranquility. The rustic people express their feelings and emotion through simple, unelaborated and unsophisticated way. Their language is more passionate, more vivid and more emphatic. The language of the rustics, according to William Wordsworth is more philosophical and permanent than the language used by the city dwellers and the earlier poets.

Poetry should express common human feelings and there should be no restriction in the expression of the experiences of the senses and sensibilities. Wordsworth defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of the powerful feelings. It is the poet’s business to embody in their poetry the general passions of men. Wordsworth avoids the use of personifications of abstract ideas and serious diction in his poems so far as possible for making poetry intelligible to all types of readers. The language of his poetry is near to that of prose. The incidents of life, the natural objects around us and the common feelings of men as well as our sorrows and happiness, failure and success should get a ready appeal in poetry without false description. Wordsworth says, “Poetry sheds no tears, such as angels weep, but natural and human tears.” Another important idea of Wordsworth about poetry is that the function of poetry is to give pleasure to readers by presenting the incidents and situations of their lives in a fascinating and unusual way with a color of imagination. Therefore Wordsworth agrees with Aristotle, “Poetry is the most philosophical of all writings. The subject of poetry is general and operative truth which is its own testimony.” According to J. C. Smith, an eminent critic, “The nature of poetry will appear more clearly when we have considered its end or purpose, or the function of the poet in a civil society.”

Wordsworth establishes a relation between man and nature in his poetry. Therefore he opines that poetry is the image of man and nature. It is an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe. Poetry, to Wordsworth, is a powerful media of supplying knowledge and pleasure to mankind. He considers that man and nature are essentially adapted to each other. Therefore, man has emotional, philosophical, moral and spiritual connection to nature. The poet’s business is to describe human life in its very form and to establish a relationship between man and universe. So, Wordsworth says that poetry is the first and last of all knowledge- it is as immortal as the heart of ma.

Poet 

Wordsworth defines a poet as a man of more comprehensive soul. A poet is different from other men, because he/she has a more lively sensibility. And his emotions and passions are more enthusiastic, tenderer and more powerful. He has a greater knowledge of human nature. The poet is a man speaking to men. But the poet is not only a social instrument but an individual, pleased with his own passions and volitions. The poet has a greater degree of imaginative power than other men, a power of looking from heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

The insight of the poet is higher than other people. That is why, a poet can create new ideas and present them to us with images and symbols. The poet’s curiosity and interest in life is intense. Therefore, the poet depicts human life in different ways. His responsibility is great because, what other people can’t think or see, he is to present the incredible and invisible images to the readers. Other people also feel and think that but they don’t have the diversity of their sense perception as the poet has, that is why, the poet’s soul is very powerful and creative. The poet must have the knowledge of human life and human society because his main study is man society. The poet seeks the truth about life and nature. His main purpose is to give pleasure by painting out the different branches of knowledge of this vast universe. 

The poet creates characters and the characters are the spokesmen of his ideas. Wordsworth’s idea about the poet is romantic ad democratic. He says that the poet shouldn’t live in a lofty height. Rather he must be one of the common human beings. He should feel what others feel and accordingly he should describe the common feelings and passions. Like the scientist or any other creative man the poet rejoices over his own invention because the purpose of all inventions and discoveries is to give pleasure. The poet also describes the real incidents that we are facing daily. Moreover, by the power of his creative imagination, the poet creates significant images to sharp our senses ad sensibilities, and to enhance our knowledge about life.

Thus Wordsworth elaborately describes the function of poetry and of the poet in his critical essay Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In both the cases he avoids classical tendencies and adopts romantic attitude.

Dr. Samuel Johnson's Evaluation of Shakespeare’s art of Characterization in his 'Preface to Shakespeare'

His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated and the whole system of life is continued in motion. 

(Preface to Shakespeare)Para 8

Dr. Samuel Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare highly praises Shakespeare’s art of characterization. Shakespeare’s characters, he argues, do not belong to the society of a particular place or time; they are universal whereas in the works of other writers a character is often an individual. Shakespeare’s characters are progeny of common humanity such as will always remain I this world and whom our eyes will continue to meet.

But though Shakespeare’s characters are universally delineated, says Johnson, it is easy to distinguish one from another. Most of the speeches are so apt that they cannot be transplanted from the character to which Shakespeare has given it. His characters are not exaggerated. He does not give us purely virtuous or utterly depraved characters. We may even say that he has no heroes in his plays; on the contrary, it is common humanity that he depicts. Even when the plot calls for a supernatural agent, the tone of the dialogues of various characters remains life-like and realistic. Shakespeare “approximates the remote and familiarities the wonderful.” He presents human nature not merely as it reacts to the common situations of life but also as it may act in extraordinary situations.

Another reason for which Johnson appreciates Shakespeare’s art of characterization is that his characters sometimes cause seriousness and sorrow and sometimes levity and laughter. The critic argues that life is an ebb and flow of sorrow and happiness; good and ill. Hence a portal of life should consist of both.

Shakespeare’s portrayal of characters has invited censure from some critics. Dennis and Rymer complain that his Romans are no sufficiently Roman. Voltaire’s protest is that his kings are not kings in the strict sense, that one of them – Claudius in Hamlet- is depicted as a drunk. In reality, argues Johnson, Shakespeare assigns nature a prominent role. His story or plot may demand Romans or Kings, but what he shows is the human nature in them. Romans and kings are essentially human beings- what befalls all human may befall them too.

Johnson’s appreciation of Shakespeare’s portrayal of characters is quite appropriate. The critic finds that no writer before Shakespeare, with the possible exception of Chaucer, has delineated human character in so realistic a manner. Johnson also shows that no knowledge of psychology had been there to help Shakespeare with theoretical hints for his character portrayal and that he acquired his knowledge of human nature from his personal observation.

Yet none of his characters is branded as second rate. His characters are full of principles and axioms, true for all time.

How does Dr. Johnson defend Shakespeare against the charges of violating the Dramatic Unities?

In the discussion of drama in “Poetics” Aristotle mentions the three unities as the three formal requirements of a play. These are the unities of time, place and action. The unity of time demands that the action should take place within a day. The unity of place demands that the action should take place within one building or city. The unity of action implies that these be a single plot of limited extent.

The unites of time, place and action were considered essential by Renaissance critics. Many dramatists such as Shakespeare paid little attention to the unities of time and place. In his “Preface to Shakespeare” Johnson shows that only unity of action has the critical justification.

In drama neo-classicism is marked by devotion to the “rules” derived from ancient practice and Aristotelian precept. Johnson questions the absolute validity of these rules.

As regards the unity of action, Aristotle says that the plot being an imitation of an action must imitate one action. Then he says that the drama is a whole. The structural union of its parts is such that, if any one of them is displaced as removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. Johnson accepts only the unity of action, among the three unities because the unity of action ensures an effect of compactness and intensity. It helps getting to the centre of things in a play.

Conventions are techniques that are accepted by common agreement. The unities are dramatic conventions. They are necessary but excessive dependence on them makes a play conventional. Johnson shows that Shakespeare, being a great playwright avoids conventionally by avoiding the unities of time and place.

The classicism of the later 17th and 18th centuries was supported by rationalism. This rationalism in the end undercut the authoritarian element in classicism. Johnson in questioning the use of three unities proves himself an exponent of rationalism. He places stresses on being reasonable. Here Johnson might be considered as a reasonable classicist. In his literary criticism he makes constant to firm literary conventional to a general knowledge of life literature. There is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. Some of his ideas may be rigid.

Johnson demands that during the enactment of a play a spectator remains “in a state of elevation above the reach of reason or of truth.” So, Johnson can firmly proclaim that the mind of a spectator wanders in ecstasy while a theatre is being enacted in front of him. But, the spectators always remain in their senses and never forget that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players who are upon the stage to recite a certain number of lines with just gesture and elegant modulation. These lines relate to some actions which may happen in places very remote from each other. And there is no absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily; as all spectators know it to be a modern theatre in actuality. Johnson thus expunges the Aristotelian concept of Unity of Place in dramatic poetry.

Then to comment upon the Unity of Time, Johnson claims that by supposition a place is introduced. Time is all of modes of existence, most obedient to the imaginations. In Johnson’s view the audience does not find it in the least offensive or absurd if the action of the play is located in the first hour at Alexanderia and the next at Rome. A lapse of year may easily be conceived of as a passage of hours. Similarly the audience can accept the change of locations on the stage. On imagination the audience can easily contract the time of real actions and also allow the shifts of settings on the stage.

Thus the unites of time and place are not necessary for creating theatrical illusion. Shakespeare didn’t want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics and never bothered the unities of time and place.

Johnson believes that ‘nothing is essential to the fable but unity of action.’ Shakespeare is a supreme by gifted artist. His gifts are intuition and imagination. These help him in maintaining the unity of action. And the unity of action ensure in Shakespeare the arrangements of events by which the initial situation is modified and developed until the final situation is brought out.

The consistency is always maintained. This consistency and continuity of action make his plays plausible and creates successful moment of theatrical illusion.

A Discussion on Arnold’s Theory ''poetry is a criticism of life"

Mathew Arnold’s importance in the history of English literary criticism is acknowledged by one and all. His greatness lies in the fact that he had a definite aim in writing poetry. He clearly stated this aim and tied to conform to his aim. It was “a criticism of life”. By “criticism of life” he meant “noble and profound application of ideas to life.” It means that poetry is not for affording pleasure and creating beauty. It must have a high deal. This ideal is to present life in such a way that it may illumine us and inspire us. In other words Arnold wanted to use poetry for making man good. The ideas he wanted to apply were moral ideas.

Arnold had a very high conception of poetry. The best poetry, he said, is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. The author of any literary piece is expected to be man of high personal experience with all his mental and intellectual faculties highly developed by means of his vast reading and deep thinking.

The phrase “criticism of life” is elaborated by Arnold with the phrase “application of ideas to life.” Poetry is an “application of ideas to life.” The more powerful the application of ideas, the greater will be the poetry. We understand what Arnold means by the phrase. He means that poetry is an interpretational life as the poet experiences it and knows it bringing into play his intellect and mind matured by experience and reading. According to Arnold, poetry is not however, merely as intellectual exercise, it is subject to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

As if poetry is a criticism of life, the laws, fixed by the poetic the poetic truth and poetic beauty, insist on one condition. This condition of the quality of “high seriousness” when comes out of the deepest sincerity with which the poet feels for the subject. And this quality of “high seriousness” is obviously found in the poetry of Dante, Homer and Milton and this is the quality which Arnold says gives their poetry its power. From Milton he quotes the famous line:-

Nor live thy life nor hate; but what thou livest

Live well; how ling or short, permit to heaven

He says poetry however deals with ideas and not facts, and without poetry science will remain incomplete. Much of religion and philosophy may be replaced by poetry. Arnold believes that the highest type of poetry should deal with moral ideas not so much in its didactic character. The moral is used in its widest sense. The very question, how to live, is according to Arnold a moral idea. Arnold declares that, moral, should not be interpreted in a narrow sense. It means a code of behavior or a system of thought. Finally, Arnold holds the view that a “poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral idea is a poetry of indifference towards life.

Criticism also means how a creative artist reacts to his experiences and gives expression to his ideal attitude to those experiences. Arnold is of the opinion that the qualities of high type of poetry can be found in its matter and substance and in its manner and style.

However Arnold’s concept of poetry is really too high and serious and in this lies its limitations. From the very first Arnold is against art for art’s sake. Many English critics have disagreed with Arnold’s statement. T.S.Eliot himself a good poet says that Arnold’s view is “frigid to any one who has felt the full surprise and elevation of a new experience of poetry.”

However in the last word we can say that poetry is a criticism of life. The critics’ duty is to examine poetry and life at the same time. As we understand Mathew Arnold had a broad conception of criticism including religion, culture and education as well as poetry. In this wider perspective the aim of criticism is “in all branches of knowledge theology, philosophy, history, art science to see the object as in itself it really is.”

Ronald Barthes' ideas on Post-structuralism as Expressed in 'The Death of the Author'

Ronald Barthes, French literary critic and theorist of structuralism and post-structuralism, announces the symbolic death of the author in order to have a birth of the reader. Barthes’ prolific output is consistently innovative and inventive to make him one of the most important and influential critics of the twentieth century. It is as assertion that struck at the very heart of traditional literary studies and that has remained one of the most controversial tenets of post-structuralism. He was a writer who disconcerted his disciples as well as his opponents by continually rejecting one kind of discourse in favor of another, and to this extent lived the assertion simultaneously with the text.

As for Bathes, writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. It is neutral, composite and oblique space where subject disappears and where all identity is lost. As soon as a fact is narrated with a view to acting no longer directly but intransitively on reality, the disconnection between the author and the writing occurs. The voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, and writing begins.

Actually, the idea of giving a text to the authority of an author is a long term process. Barthes argues that the traditional notion of the author is a product of the rationalist and empiricist thought of the Middle Ages that ascribes a central importance to the individual human being- for a text. It is the person of the author that is more important than the text. So, we see the author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews, magazines etc. We also see in men of letters as anxiousness to unite their person and their work through diaries and memories. Thus the image of literature centers round the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his ideas and criticism also is directed to that end. It is usually thought that the “explanation” of the text is found in the man or woman who has written it. Thus the author becomes the creator, God, and thus a theological entity who knows only about his creation, his work.

Though the influence of the author remains powerful, many pre modern writers have tried to challenge the centrality of the author. In France, Stephen Mallerme was undoubtedly the first whose poetry reaches the point at which language can be said to be “speaking itself” through an impersonal writing. For him, it is language which speaks, not he author. It ceases to be either a psychological expression of the poet’s subjectivity or a representation of something external to its own workings. Mallermie’s entire poetics consists in suppressing the author in the interests of writing. Despite the supposed acuity of his psychological analyses, Proust has, according to Barthes, written the epic of modern writing. Surrealism and linguistic ideas also tried to remove the author from the fixed and ever-occupying place.

The removal of the author is more than an historical fact or an act of writing. But it means to transform the modern text in such a level that it seems the Author is totally absent. Here the temporality is different. When we believe that the Author is present, we conceive him as the past of his own book; book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and an after. Here the author is father, the book is his child, thought, and nourished by his father. But the idea of the modern scriptor of is different. The modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text but no linear relation, no preceding or exceeding, no “here and now” with the immediate enunciation of it. It follows that “writing does not mean an operation of recording, notation, representation and depiction.” But it is a “performative”, a rare verbal form in which the enunciation has no other content than the act by which it is uttered. Thus the modern scriptor buries the Author and traces a field without origin- or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins.

Thus a text is not a line of words with a single theological meaning or the message of the Author- God but a multi- dimensional space in which a variety of non- original writings blends and clash.(Like Collase). The text is a combination quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture. The writer actually can not writer, but to mix writings, to place the ones with the others, as never to rest on any one of them. He should know that his “wish to express himself” is a grotesque one because the “inner thing” that he wishes to translate is only a ready-formed dictionary; its words have man synonyms and can express indefinitely his thinking through those words. So, the modern scriptor, succeeding the Author, has no passions, humors, feelings, impressions but rather this immense dictionary (is) the source of his writing. To Barthes, life is only the imitation of the book which itself is only a tissue of signs infinitely deferred.

According to Barthes, to give a text an Author opens the path of victory for the critic and at the same time the author imposes a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified. Thus the critic finding out the Author “explained” the text. But modern idea wants to suppress the critic along with the Author. When the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text is futile. So in the crowd of writings, nothing is to be “deciphered” but to be “disentangled” the structure is everywhere but nothing in the beneath; the space of writing is to be ranged over; writing ceaselessly posits meaning. In precisely this way literature, by refusing to assign an ultimate meaning to the text, liberates what may be called an anti theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary, because it refuses to fix the meaning in God and his hypostases- reason, science and law.

According to Barthes, a text is made up of multiple writings drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogues, parody, contestation. But there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up writing are inscribed without any of them being, lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. But this destination can not be personal. The reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Classic criticism has never paid an attention to the reader, for it, the writer is the only person in literature. To give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth. In short, the death of the Author signals the liberation of the reader by the by the very assertion that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”