A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO PRACTICAL CRITICISM | POETRY | DO'S & DON'TS

 

Step 1 – Reading and thinking

Read the poem at least three times before you begin to write anything.

While reading try to detect a ‘tension’ or more simply a ‘contrast’ in the poem (by trying to see what is positive or negative in the poem. E.g., night and darkness vs light and day; mortality vs immortality; age vs youth, etc.).

Try to identify the general behind the particular – by asking yourself what could be the larger issue that underlies and informs the poem. For instance, ‘The Welsh Hill Country’ is not just a description of the countryside. It seems reasonable to suggest that the poet is dealing with the difference between the superficial appearance of things and the grim reality of life. The poet is talking about disease, waste and decay in life.

Step 2 – Starting an essay

Summarize the poem, establish your sense of the central opposition in the poem, set up the controlling idea for the essay as a whole.

Summarize the poem stanza by stanza (one line for each stanza) In the last line of your introductory paragraph merely touch upon the larger issue you have grasped in the poem – You have now got the content out of the way and can concentrate on pointing out the formal choices the poet has made.

Step 3 – The main body of your answer

After your general opening paragraph devote one paragraph to each stanza. The best approach is to pick out particular words and phrases for comment – not every word and detail but a few and really do justice to them.

Step 4 – Sum up your sense of the poem as a whole.

 

Taken from Practical Criticism by Peck and Coyle

SOME DO’S AND DON’TS OF APPLIED CRITICISM

Do:

Read the poem carefully and cautiously – at least three times before you begin to write anything.

Pay attention to how something is being said instead of only what is said – since it is the ‘how’ that conditions the ‘what’. In other words: the form shapes the content.

Be alert to unusual ways of putting things (language) and keep asking yourself the difficult yet rewarding question, why. Your job is to decide on the aptness of the choice that the writer has made.

Use a few technical terms now and then – it can add sophistication and precision to your writing.

Adopt a logical and argumentative style of writing.

Look for tension, conflict or opposition in the poem.

Look for positive images and impression that can be set against negative images and impressions.

Concentrate on the opening lines. You don’t need to sort out the poem as a whole at this stage. You are simply concerned with getting an initial confident hold on the poem.

Try to see the larger issue that lies behind the particular details of the poem; the tension you have spotted should help you identify a larger issue.

Don’ts:

Waste your precious time (and the examiner’s) with lame technical descriptions which fail to say anything about the effectiveness of the work form a critical or aesthetic point of view. E.g., this is a poem which contains fourteen lines.

Use vague emotive terms like ‘poignant’ – they betray a hollowness of response. Also avoid the use of empty superlatives and adjectives which say nothing about the text.

Praise a poem to the skies because you feel you have to. Merely saying fine things will not gain you extra marks. At the same time, shock dismissive tactics will be equally counterproductive.

Try to analyze the whole poem in advance. If you try to do this you are likely to tie yourself up in knots.

At the outset, worry about details you don’t understand in the poem. Such details can be dealt with later.

Don’t get sidetracked. You are analyzing a poem. Concentrate on the effects that are actually taking place in the poem rather than talking about your own life and experiences.

Get over-ingenious. You aren’t searching for hidden meanings in the poem. Stick to the plain sense of the poem and any larger issues that the plain sense suggests.

 

GREEK REFERENCES IN LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

Few Greek references:

Medusa – In Greek mythology she belonged to one of the three winged female monsters. There other two were called the Gorgons, they were called Steno and Erykah. They had snakes for hair and turned all who looked at them to stone. Medusa was alone mortal and was slain by Perseus.

Harpies – A mythical monster with the face of a woman and the body of a vulture. They defiled whatever they touched. Juno (Jupiter’s wife) sent them to deprive the blind Phineas of food.

Sirens – Sea nymphs of classical myth whose sweet singing lured listeners to their doom.

Scylla – Six headed monster who preyed upon sailors.

Lilith – Female night monster. She was a nocturnal wandering demon especially dangerous to children and women in childbirth. She is also known as the seductress of men. It is a sematic name for the beautiful and licentious (person having lose morals), unmarried harlot (prostitute) who seduces men in streets and fields.

ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1717-1850)

 

Wordsworth is sorry for the loss of childhood which he believes was surrounded by innocence and mystery. He could see in nature all around him a celestial quality. He remembers a period of childhood where everything was fresh and beautiful and how he has lost his faculty of seeing beauty and mystery in nature.

Stanza 1 – His dream is of this paradisial state from which he has come. He has lost this ability of seeing things in celestial quality and God in every ordinary thing which he thinks a child still retains.

Stanza 2 – He believes that nature is unchanging in its beauty. There will always be radiance and star look beautiful, but the only thing is that the poet’s perception of it has changed. The glory has disappeared. He appreciates beauty with regard to things in nature, but he cannot see the celestial light.

Stanza 3 – Labor – small drum; one cataract – waterfall. It is spring time. nature is joyful, lively and gay.

Stanza 4 – Coronal – Garland of flowers. The joy that he feels is forced. It does not come naturally or easily to him as it once did when he was a child. The poet feels that there is something wrong with him because he cannot participate wholeheartedly in the joy of nature. (Pansies are associated with thoughts).

Stanza 5 – This forgetting is the place from where we come from i.e., heaven. Soul comes from God. As we grow old, we move away from the light of God to adulthood.

Stanza 6 – Earth is personified as a foster mother and the child is being compensated for what is lost. The earthly pleasures and pursuits all tend to make us forget our former glorious state.

Stanza 7 – The child has earthly parents and they equip the child to face problems of life, worldly events and pursuits occupy man’s time and energies. He soon busies himself in continually imitating the action and pursuits of others and thereby he forgets his heavenly home.

Stanza 8 – The external appearance does not show how immense the soul is and the great potential the soul has.

Stanza 9 – Soul is immense. Child opens peoples’ eyes to reality of God around them. Child’s mind is constantly in touch with God. Man is constantly in search of though with such things. He need not search it. A grown up man’s mind is dark. He does not know the truth. Freight – soul. Frost can cause harm and destruction. Worries of the world almost frost you. Embers – ashes. In the embers there are tiny sparks of light and these bits of light according to Wordsworth are remembrance of our earlier existence in paradise. If a man is in touch with his childhood, he finds some solace or peace. Although Wordsworth is far removed from blessed state of childhood, there is hope yet. A man can always find strength in remembrance of things passed. Memories of the past are a source of infinite happiness. They are reform of all our understanding which nothing can destroy. So it is essentially the remembrance of childhood. This is the essence of poems.

Stanza 10 – He takes pleasure in nature. He does not want to give it up.

Stanza 11 – He appreciates the morning day is still young as the child is young. The clouds that make things mystique and unclear, the clouds rob the light of the day. Clouds of gloom, depression and sadness make the end of life gloomy and sad. Flowers can provoke men to think deep thoughts. Flowers provoke men to facts of death and life.

 

THE LEECH GATHERER – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH – RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

 

Wordsworth makes a deliberate choice of the most unpoetic occupation and of the most unheroic hero.

Stanza 1 – The poem begins with a spring morning after a storm. The storm had raged all night and left a serene morning. The poet seems to rejoice int eh beauty that he sees around. The song of the birds announces a season of ecstatic love.

Stanza 2 – Wordsworth describes the fertility of nature on the life which springs from sun, rain and earth. This description of the perfect harmony and life of nature leads Wordsworth to consider his own condition.

Stanza 3 – Wordsworth notices a gap between the harmonious joy of nature and man’s own existence.

Stanza 4 – The very excess of joy leads man to a sense of what he has to lose. Man is therefore fearful of the future. This is the parable of the Garden of Eden in which knowledge of good and evil separates man from natural harmony of the animal kingdom and compels him to work and fear in future and this causes him so much anguish and pain.

Stanza 5 – The poet must experience the extremes of both joy and pain. The nature of man’s fear for the future and his exile from the unselfconscious paradise of the hare and the skylark is made clear in these lines.

ODE TO A GRECIAN URN - KEATS

Stanza 1 – The sight of the beautiful Grecian Urn sets the poet’s mind at work. He imagines it as a bride wedded to the spirit of silence, and as a child adopted by the silently, slow moving time, the urn has beautiful pictures carved on its surface. It has been speechless through the ages, only using its pictures to express its meaning and message. It has not been spoilt by the ravages of time. The pictures on the surface of the urn depict the pastoral life of Greece in a better way than is ever possible in poetry. The scenes depicted on the urn are decorated with ornamental leaf work borders. The poet sees various figures carved on the urn and wants to know whether they are of God’s, or men, or both, belonging to the Valley of Temp (Greece) or Arcadia (mountain district of Greece), places associated with ancient Greek pastoral poetry. On another side of the urn the poet sees various figure of men or gods. There are also figures of shy and unwilling maidens, madly pursued by their young lovers, trying heard to free themselves form their impatient embrace. On still another side of the urn there are pictures of merry singers, playing on their musical instruments. The faces of the people indicate that they are enjoying the utmost pleasure and happiness in their woodland revelry. The poet wants to know the real significance of these woodland scenes.

Stanza 2 – Keats says that the music heard by our ears is pleasing no doubt, but the music played by the figures in stone is much more pleasing and delightful, because it appeals to our imagination and soul. It is more lasting and permanent, and it has infinite variety and charm. Every person listening to it in his imagination is impressed by it in its own way. Art has been given permanence to the musicians and the lover though very near to his beloved will never be able to catch hold of her and kiss her. Yet the lover should not be sorrowful because he and his beloved have been made eternal by art.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE – JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

 (Stanza 1) The poet is extremely fascinated by the sweet song of the nightingale. In fact, he is oppressed by its beauty and joy. His heart begins to ache, and his senses are benumbed by the excess of joy. He becomes forgetful of himself as if he has taken a cup of poison or a doze of some drug. To the poet the nightingale is a wood nymph, who in soon beech green sings of the beauty of summer in a joyful and melodious manner.

(Stanza 2) The poet longs to lose his very spirit in complete absorption with the nightingale’s song. He believes that the place where the nightingale sings her sweet song might be a region of perfect and eternal bliss. He therefore, wants to escape from this world an go to the joyous world of the bird. At first he seeks the intoxicating influence of wine to help him in his imaginative flight to the birds dwelling place, and he longs for a cup of very strong wine that has been kept under the earth for centuries. He believes that by drinking such wine he will be able to forget the world around him and fly in imagination to the delightful regions of the bird. The thought of wine brings to his mind the rich romantic association of Southern France.

(Stanza 3) The poet longs to fade away into the dim forest where the nightingale sings joyfully and to lose his spirit in the spirit of the happy bird. He wants to fly away from this world of sorrows and miseries and join the bird in her happier region. He believes that the nightingale never experiences these sorrows and miseries. The poet may enjoy if only for a short while the happiness of the nightingale by enkindling the imagination with the help of wine and forgetting the sorrowful realities of the world. Human life is a tale of sorrow and pain and men cannot enjoy even a moment of their lives. In this world, men sit and hear one another narrating individual sorrows and disappointments. In this world beauty and love are both transient (short lived). Beauty loses its charm very soon and youth also seizes to feel the romance of love.

(Stanza 4) The poet drops the idea of flying to the happy regions of the bird with the help of wine. Now he says that he will fly to the bird with the inspiration of poetic imagination through his dull mind temporarily checks his flight. But the next moment he finds himself in the dim forest of beauty and romance where the nightingale is singing her sweet song. It is the time of night and perhaps the moon, surrounded by the stars is shining int eh sky like a fairy queen sitting in her chariot surrounded by all her attendant fairies. But the bird is singing in the dark where there is no light. The moonlight sometimes enters the place at the blowing of the wind, when the leaves are separated and light passes through them.

(Stanza 5) The poet describes the romantic grove. Though there is pitch darkness all around and the poet cannot see the flowers, he can distinguish them by their fragrance. His imagination pictures the forest scene in all the beauty of early summer.

(Stanza 6) The poet listens to the song of the nightingale in this perfumed darkness. The song of the nightingale has transported him to the highest moon of imaginative rapture. This moment he feels is most suitable for him to die. Death will relieve him from all the troubles and miseries of life. He invites death to come upon him slowly and silently at this time of midnight. Even after his death the nightingale would continue singing her song.

(Reference to Ruth) Ruth was a woman of Moab who after the death of her husband follows her Mother-in-law Naomi to Judah. There she gleaned corn in the fields of Boaz, kinsmen to her mother-in-law. Later on Ruth married Boaz.

(Stanza 7) The nightingale is not moral like man. She is not born for death – at least her voice is immortal. It has given pleasure to Kings and peasants alike in the past. E.g., Ruth and princesses.

(Stanza 8) Soon the poets dream is broken. The bird flies away and his airy castle of imaginative pleasure build upon the beauty of the nightingale’s song is shattered. Keats believed that the poetic imagination was like a fairy who mischievously deceives men by giving them false allurement of happiness. As the bird flies further away and the musical notes deceived, he is still in doubt whether he is awake or sleeping.

 

Meanings of terms in the poem:

Lethe – a river of forgetfulness in the classical underworld

Flora – Goddess of flowers

Hippocrene – was a fountain in Mount Helicon which was sacred to the muses. It was supposed to have gushed out from the earth when it was struck by the hoof of a winged horse Pegasus. The fountain was supposed to have power to inspire those who drank from it.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND – PERCY B. SHELLEY (1792-1810)

The first two stanzas describe the west wind primarily in its character as destroyer rather than preserver.

In the first stanza the emphasis is on the activity of the west wind on the earth. The wind cannot be seen. It must be felt by witnessing its effects on things which can be seen, and which are the objects or agents of its power. The leaves are like ghosts (they are thin and frail) fleeing from an enchanter; and the winded seeds blowing to the ground and buried like corpses in a grave are in fact resting in cradles to be reborn with the coming spring.

The west wind removes dead leaves and scatters the seeds of new life. The west wind destroys the worn out and in doing so provides for the new. The west wind symbolizes change for the poet. The poet links the changes brought by the west wind with the changes he wants to bring about.

The poet’s stress is on social change. The poet thinks that the spirit of rebellion drives away outdated beliefs and useless ideas. Ideas which are outdated must be replaced. That which is diseased and disorderly must be removed. In spring, the poet sees new life. The first two and half tercets deal with the destructive activity of the west wind on earth. The rest deals with regeneration and change that comes about in spring.

The poet sees the west wind as a destroyer of old ways and a preserver of new ways. The leaves that fall symbolize old and outdated ideas and death. The seeds symbolize new ideas and rebirth. The death and rebirth of vegetation gives new hope for mankind and himself. There is a note of supplication and pleading at the end of the stanza.

The second stanza deals with the activity of the west wind in skies. The poet describes the different clouds in the sky and says that the clouds are too young to burst and bring about an atmospheric change and bring rain. On a literal level the west wind is portrayed as force of nature and power which creates a storm. The west wind is a symbol of rebellion and radical change. The storm destroys what is in existence, but also holds the promise of regeneration of new philosophy, new outlook and new habits. The poet uses the poem to foretell a new age, implication is that after destruction, construction follows. He hopes that in the new society there will be equality, liberty and justice, not divorced from rationality.

The third stanza deals with the activity of the west wind under the sea. The implication is that everything that is old and corrupt is destroyed by the coming of the west wind. The wind disturbs the sea and has a message for the underwater creatures and vegetation. The sea sympathizes with the land. As the wind blows on land it also blows on water. It is about changes on the surface of the water. The stress is on the aquatic quality of the west wind. The winds of change blow everywhere on earth, in the sky and on water.

The fourth stanza deals with the poem’s admiration with the west wind. The poet does not want to be tied by rules and regulations of society. He wants to be free like the west wind. The poet wants to bring a change in the world by influencing world opinion. As a boy he had no inhibitions, fears, or responsibilities. Now he longs for that kind of freedom without responsibilities. He uses a simile to stress this point. The poet sees himself in position of the west wind, he is sad that he does not have freedom the west wind has. As a child he thought had freedom but as grownup he has less freedom, so he values his independence. One sees a self-pitying attitude at the end of this stanza.

He would like to do everything that the west wind does, but he cannot do so, because he is crippled by circumstances and is a prisoner of society. The poet realizes that tragedy is a part of existence.

The fifth stanza deals with the decay he sees all around. The poet identifies with the decaying leaves. The strength, vigor and force of the west wind is enough to give him strength and energy in order to bring about the rebellion he wants to spread change through his writings. He, an atheist, looks upon the west wind as divine. The poet wants to be like it. He wants whatever is dead and decrepit to be swept away. He says that life is cyclical and death is followed by new life - birth, death and rebirth. The poet uses fire as a sign of hope, life and enlightenment. The message here is new life and the end of tyranny and dictation. The last line shows hope after despair. The poet believes that after reaching the depths of despair things are bound to improve. Here we see Shelley as a mature poet who accepts adult responsibilities and realizes that tone has to ultimately destroy the old life. We see the poet recovering his pose. The tone is sad but there is a new dynamic note.

The spirit of the west wind inspires the poet to give the world new ideas and scatter the message of change.

PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS

 The Lyrical Ballads came into existence in 1798 through the joint effort of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The volume opens with Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and closes with Woodsworth’s ‘Lines Written about Tintern Abbey’. The volume has 23 poems but of which only four were written by Coleridge. The poems are illustrative of the characteristics of the romantic movement and are justifiably regarded as a great landmark in the history of English Literature.

By way of preface to the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, 1798, Wordsworth contributed a short ‘Advertisement’ that occupied only two pages of the present volume. In the second edition published in 1800, he supplied in its place a ‘Preface’ of considerable length of poetry in general and the principles of hi sown art. He thoroughly revised this preface for the third edition in 1802 and added to it substantially. It must therefore be dated 1800-1802. Late in life he again revised it; but the changes he then made, effect expression rather than matter.

Through his preface, Wordsworth tells us what he proposed in those poems, i.e., ‘to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as it was possible in a selection of language really used by men’.

‘Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint and speak a plainer and a more emphatic language’.

Besides, ‘Being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple, unelaborated expressions’, consequently such language is ‘a more permanent and a far more philosophical language’.

Wordsworth then goes on toe discuss the issue of style. He says, ‘the reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes… They are, indeed a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion and I have made use of them as such; but have endeavored utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of style, or as a family language, which writers in meter seem to lay claim to by prescription’.

Later on he goes on to say that language of a large portion of every good poem even of the most elevated character must be necessarily accept with reference to the meter, in no respect differ from that of good prose but likewise that some of the most interesting parts of best poems will be found to be strictly the languages of prose when prose is well written’.

Wordsworth next seems to clarify what is meant by the word poet to Wordsworth, ‘He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more likely sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and violations and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him… To these qualities he has added a disposition to be effected more than other men by absent things as if they were present’.

Wordsworth also tries to bring out the dependence of man on nature. ‘He considered man and nature as essentially adapted to each other and the mind of man naturally the mirror of the fairest and the most interesting properties of nature’.

With regard to science he says, ‘the man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in its solitude, the poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breadth and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassive expression which is in the countenance of all science… Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge. It is as immortal as the heart’.

At the close of the preface Wordsworth states that it is for the reader to see how far these things have been attained in the poems published in the lyrical ballads and more importantly whether it was worth attaining.

Describing the origin of lyrical ballads in his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge points out the kind of poetry the two poets had aimed at. In the poems of Coleridge the character and incidents ‘were to be imparted, at least supernatural’, yet, ‘possessing such human interest and assemblance of truth as to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith’. Wordsworth on the other hand was to deal with persons and objects of everyday life in such a way as to give them ‘the charm of novelty’ and to excite a feeling similar to the supernatural, by awakening the mind from ‘the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and wonder of the world before us’.

 

ODE TO DEJECTION – Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

 This poem was originally written in a form of a letter to Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law with whom Coleridge was in love. It is a personal poem.

An ode is a very complex lyric and very often the Greek Odes were used on a formal occasion. The pattern is much more complicated than an ordinary lyric. The ode was a complicated song or a verse form used by poets to convey their pains and sadness. When poetry is written in a complicated ode form it can be defined as a Pindaric Poem after classical poet Pindar. Normally, the Pindaric quotes are not used and so when a very personal poem is presented in a very formal way it is done with this type of an ode. This poem is a very personal poem presented in a very formal way.

The theme of the poem in some respect is of the damaged self. Coleridge was a sensitive human being. He is suffering throughout the poem but he does not want the lady to suffer. It is an honest poem. One of the things troubling him is that he feels that the poetic faculty within him is dying. He feels that he cannot write the way he used to because his mind is troubled. In its original version the poem was a verse letter written to Sara Hutchinson and most of the material in this poem is related to a personal theme. A lot of his emotions are suppressed, and the stress is on subjectivity. If the poem lacks a certain coherence of pattern and organization, it is because of his origin. Throughout the poem the poet writes in a personal mode. It is in the free Pindaric code form. The poem has a conversational tone.

The poem begins on a very casual note where the poet is commenting on the external environment, on nature and the arrival of a storm. With this he is suggesting that there is also a storm in his mind and at the end of the stanza he wants the storm to break out because he has a perpetual feeling that he is losing his writing capacity.

In the Ballad of Sir Patric Spence we see an intimate, juxtaposition of young and promising with the wasted and worn out.

Dejection on ode is a prayer where he does not want the lady to suffer. He does not want her to wear any sin. He wants her to be pure and happy. The poem begins with a supposingly casual statement about the weather. The scene that is created is a heavily evocative scene. The moods of nature harmonize the moods of man. The thoughts of the poet are influenced by what is happening to nature in the world around. The poet wishes that the storm growing inside him breaks open, he is scared of his lack of feeling. He thinks that there is not enough emotion in his pain. He believes that once the storm has passed, he will be able to experience a certain part and he can go back into his old state. He wants to do away with the pain in him. He does not mind the pain but he does not want any numbness. He says that if the storm inside him erupts there will be some sort of feeling, some sort of devotion.

In the light of what is going to follow later in the poem, the opening lines are written with a cool detachment. It is mystery as the poet is very troubled and extremely disturbed. In the sky the poet tries to find symbolic language for his turmoil. Coleridge like Wordsworth is scared that he can no longer summon up a response to natural feelings. In his poem we see just blank despair so that the original assurance with which he started is deceptive and misleading. Fear is juxtaposed with love.

In the third stanza he brings out the empty dull pain. The emphasis is on the scene of stifling grief and lack of feeling. This numbness and not being able to relate to nature troubles him. He is able to register all the changes in nature and all beauty in the surroundings, but emotionally he is no longer able to participate in nature. His mind is in a turmoil. Even when he describes the natural environment he links it up with his own sorrow.

In the last two lines of the third stanza he talks about his attitude to morality. He believes that moral and emotional harmony are necessary to feel earths loveliness. He says we cannot blame nature for what is happening to oneself. Nature gives us what we give her. If we feel troubled we like to believe that nature is also troubled. The poet is longing for a spontaneous overflow of feelings. He says that he cannot project his soul abroad because of the smothering weight that lies upon his heart.

In the first three lines of the fourth stanza there is a cry of despair as well as the honesty of the man. There is an expostulatory tone which tells us that we cannot blame nature for our shortcomings. Nature is constant and does not change. In stead of nature keeping the heart alive to love and beauty, it is the souls self producing joy that gives life to nature.

In the fifth stanza, the poet says that he is guilty, but he does not want the one he loves to be sad, he wants to see her happy. He does not want her to suffer.

The sixth stanza is a biographical account of what has happened and how he has lost the most important faculty for his – his imagination. Things were very different formerly. Joy and sadness both have a part in his life. He realized that those hardships were temporary and would pass away. He had a sense of flexibility and could always look for some thing to compensate him. He was always able to appreciate the beautiful things when he was young and he had a lot of afflictions, but they did not worry him. He believes now that he has sunk so low that he cannot regain the optimistic feeling which he feels he has lost.

In the seventh stanza he says that he wants to escape from the unpleasant realities of life. There is a description of the wind and he imagines in the wind various pictures. This stanza actually shows that his imagination is as vivid as before. He describes the raving wind which blows above the bare mountain tops, destroys trees and shed leaves. He is slowly creating an eerie atmosphere by referring to the witch’s house.

The wind seems to remind him of an unholy cold winters night. The fierce sound of the wind reminds him of a retreating army and when the sound of the wind dies he is reminded of a lost child who weeps for his parents. The poet does not realize how powerful his imagination is.

In the last stanza he prays that his beloved has peace and joy. Although he is suffering he does not want her to suffer. He says that one way of being happy is to be at peace with oneself. He is unable to relate to nature because he is not at peace with himself. He hopes that the lady can always identify nature because she is pure and free from sin. We see Coleridge’s altruism in these lines. In Coleridge’s poem the focus is away from himself in contrast to Wordsworth’s poem where the focus is on himself. Coleridge believed that in order to appreciate nature you have to be in perfect harmony with her. He wants the woman to have complete emotional integration with the life around her. The poem ends with a blessing.

 

Questions:

Show how Coleridge’s poetry reflects a sense of wonder in the presence of the unknown. (You can also use Kubla Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner to explain).

Explain Coleridge’s mood in the poem ‘Dejection an Ode’. How has he used nature to reflect his mood?

THE LUCY POEMS – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - ANALYSIS OF POEM IV (THREE YEARS SHE GREW IN SUN AND SHOWER)

Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower – This poem tells a story most of which is narrated by nature itself. It is a story of the growth of Lucy to mature beauty.

Nature reveals the way in which she works to create the complex unity of a living being to produce an almost perfect woman.  

The stanza is marked by a series of antithesis, a series of contrast, and these opposing principles are the loom in which the elaborate fabric of life is woven.

The third stanza deals with the vital energy produced by the opposition of forces. Lucy is the representative of all organic living things. In all of life, the capacity for calm rest and deep sleep, for contemplation and quiet depends on the opposing principles of energy and joy.

Lucy is not only molded by the physical forces but also by her imagination which can respond to the patterns which she sees in the universe.

Lucy is shaped not only by the graceful forms of nature like a bending willow, but also the motions of the storm. All these are converted by the imagination into patterns and models for human life itself.

Wordsworth here makes it clear that the world is largely what the mind makes of it. Lucy must listen and be attentive if she is to find in nature the harmony which is to be reflected in her own beauty.

Two opposing principles are advanced:

1.       The eternal order of the stars

2.       The ever-changing dance of the rivulets

Wordsworth expresses his sense of wonder at the complex inter-relationships between the permanent unchanging laws of nature and the magical complexities they produce – the dancing rivulets and also beautiful women.

The joyful creation of life has its inevitable results, the creation of death. The lover makes no complain, he expresses no grief, he merely states that there is nothing left but memory which by its very existence deepens the sense of loss.

This poem is not merely a lament of Lucy’s death, it is a statement on the condition of all of human life – nature combines to create a complex being and then it is doomed.

read the poem by clicking the link: https://www.poetry-archive.com/w/lucy.html

NEO-CLASSISM AND ROMANTICISM IN POETRY

 Neo-classical (18^th century) v/s Romantic Revival Movement (19^th century)

With the publication of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads in 1798, the Romantic Revival Movement was ushered in England. This movement was opposed to the neo-classical movement of the eighteenth century.

 

NEO-CLASSISM

The neo-classical poets were traditionalistic. The past for them was important. The rules and regulations were essential. The presentation of material was important in a prescribed form. These poets were trying to imitate the classical poets of the past. They were very suspicious of imagination. This was the literature of coffee houses, drawing rooms, city. It was the urban emphasis of man in society. The stress was on decorum, form and neatness. Emphasis was placed on reason and the heroic couplet was emphasized. The heroic couplet was a verse form consisting of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. This can be summed in the words of Alexander Pope:

True wit is nature to

Advantage dress’d

What oft was thought but

N’er so well expressed.

 

ROMANTICISM

It was a deliberate and a sweeping revolt against the literary principles of the eighteenth century, also called the Augustan Age – the Age of Reason. Just as the poets Pope and John Dryden of Neo Classical tradition had rejected the romantic tradition of the Elizabethans, the age of Shakespeare as crude and irregular and had adopted classical or more correctly Neo Classical principles of French literature in their writings, so now Wordsworth and Coleridge in their turn rejected the Neo classical principles in favor of the romantic.

These poets were therefore reverting back to the Elizabethian age or the first Romantic Age in English Literature. Therefore, this was not something new in literature and was called Romantic Revival Period.

There were few differences between sixteenth century and nineteenth century romanticism.

In the Elizabethan age, most of the Elizabethans except Shakespeare appeared to have been unable even to assign been unable even to assign flowers to their proper seasons whereas poets and writers in the nineteenth century looked upon nature from the point of view unknown to the Elizabethans. The sixteenth century was the age of drama and an age of action. A life where they had to investigate and explore, Romanticism in the nineteenth century on the other hand was an age of the novel. It was an age given to introspection keenly alive to their own literary traditions and history.

With Romanticism, poet’s emphasis was on imagination, they were less bound by rules. They believed that they were not answerable to anyone but themselves. They believed in using a variety of verse forms.

Emphasis was on individual creativeness, heightened imagination, feelings, sensibilities, subjectivity and a spirit of freedom with regard to form content.

Neo classical poets were conscious of decorum. Therefore, language of poetry had to be elevated. These poets lived in their ivory towers. They firmly believed poetry was not for the masses.

In opposition to this, romantic poets believed that everyday language could be used in poetry. A poet they believed was a man among men. The language of poetry need not be different from language of prose.

In the eighteenth century imagination was not an important feature in Neo Classical theory of poetry. For Dryden and Pope, imagination had little importance. They approved of fantasy, controlled by ‘reason’ or ‘judgment’. For them, what mattered most in poetry was its truth to emotions or sentiments. They wished to speak in general terms for common experience of man. They did not express their views. For them the poet was more an interpreter than a creator. They were not interested in mysteries of life.

Rene Descartes, the philosopher influenced the eighteenth century writers to a great extent. He was a rationalist who thought that the world was a machine controlled by God.

The Romantic attitude is expressed in the following lines, ‘we are moving from mechanistic attitude towards nature, to an organic one’.

The Romantic Poets believed that imagination, the higher faculty of need does not allow them to be content to look at things only at the surface level, but encourage them to delve deeper onto the surface. They also laid emphasis on the mysterious, spiritual and the occult.

These poets believed in taking the reader away to distant lands; lands of enchantment, witches, magic, weird things and things which are not normal.

The Romantic Poet is not mundane. He feels that there are extra sensory parts which takes us to other worlds which we cannot experience with the ordinary eye.

The Romantics had a specific attitude to nature. They believed man had to control it to form it. They did not think of nature as a tool of man. They thought nature had an autonomous existence. It was in a position to bring about different responses from different people.

They loved the wild beauty i.e., forests, mountains, untamed by man. They rarely spoke of nature objectively.

These poets believed that sensibility intervenes to turn objective nature into subjective feelings.

Nature becomes organic part of that person’s life and existence.

In the eighteenth century, nature is static where as in the nineteenth century nature is constantly evolving. Nature chastens man. It makes him aware of the sufferings in the real world. Nature is no longer looked at from the outside. Linked up with all this is that the diction and syntax of poetry is strongly influenced by the ideals of spontaneity and naturalism for the romantics.

Wordsworth’s definition of a poet is ‘a man speaking to men’. The poet stresses on spontaneous overflow of feelings. As a speaker the poet liked to ignore the appearance of pre-deliberated artists. The earlier classical concept of a poet was a contrast. The poet being a maker had to constantly work on different tools and had to constantly perfect his art. The stress here was on craftsmanship.

The Romantics portray nature with a subjective feeling. For them nature is animated. It is here we see different forms of living things having a life of their own. They looked upon nature as a process. Nature is inexhaustible which has wonder and surprise in it. Nature is a beautiful awesome phenomenon. Wordsworth refers to nature as ‘the anchor of my purest thought’.

The attitude of the Romantics is that man is seen as being essentially good but is corrupted by civilization. The stress is on mans return to nature. They were Pantheistic in their attitude and have a high regard for nature and the natural environment and saw the hands of the Creator guiding the universe. They go beyond the world of the flesh and emphasize the sublime.

Wordsworth’s ambition was to make the ordinary beautiful, where as Coleridge was to make the extraordinary natural. Wordsworth wants to show the beautiful in ordinary life. He tried to give a new meaning to common things, to reveal the awe in ordinary life. Coleridge wants to make the extraordinary, supernatural, remote and unusual normal. One aspect of Romanticism which centers around the world of dreams and marvels is seen in Coleridge’s poetry. He conjures a world of phantasonal (fantasy) scenery, linked up with supernatural happenings. In Kubla Khan one dominant element is the element of mystery and wonder. These are also seen in the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Christabel’.