WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

            William Wordsworth belongs to the period that witnessed a Romantic revolt against the Neo-classical movement. Wordsworth himself was highly influenced by the spirit of the French Revolution and the writing of Rousseau who challenged everything that interfered with the natural right and liberty of man.

            Wordsworth’s contribution to literary criticism lies chiefly in his preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads published by him and his friend Coleridge first in 1798. Wordsworth in his preface discusses the question of poetic diction or the language fit for poetry which had been the topic of heated discussion among the neo-classical and earlier writers. The neo-classical writers rejected low words and phrases as unfit for poetic use. Dr. Johnson added to his list the use of technical words. To the neo classical writers, the diction of poetry differed from that of prose by its happy combination of words or figures of speech.

            Wordsworth recommended the use of a simpler diction. In the Preface of the Lyrical Ballads, he says that his principal object in these poems is to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men and at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination in order to present even, ordinary things in an unusual aspect. He rejected the personification of abstract ideas. He also ruled out any distinction between the language of poetry and that of prose. But later, he contra dicted himself stating that the selection of the language spoken by men must be made with true taste and feeling. He also admitted the possibility of what Johnson called ‘flowers of speech’ arising in the process. All these features along with metre definitely make the language of poetry different from that of prose. In this context, Rene Wellek says: ‘Wordsworth, actually ends in good neoclassicism!’.

            The second part of his preface contains the concept of poetry. To begin with, he defines poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. But as such spontaneity gives no room for the selection of language really used by men. He modifies the definition saying that the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings should take its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. In this process the emotion originally aroused by the sight was recreated in contemplation. This emotion then empowers the mind driving away contemplation and the result in poetry. But by spontaneity in poetry, Wordsworth did not mean a total rejection of workmanship.

            To Wordsworth, the poet is a man speaking to men. So poetry should have a definite purpose apart from delighting the reader. Poetry is the pursuit of truth of man’s knowledge of himself and the world around him. Scientific truth benefits us materially whereas the poetic truth becomes part of our existence. The poetic truths are felt in the blood and felt along the heart. So Wordsworth says, ‘Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science’. Poetry, according to Wordsworth is a great force for good. Wordsworth wished to be considered only as a teacher. To him, every great poet is a teacher. Like Plato, he also wanted poetry to teach. But at the same time he insisted on pleasure as being an essential condition of poetic teaching. Man, by nature, is a bundle of contradictions. Wordsworth as a critic is doubly so.

c � o i H�f �% he language of poetry. He says that ‘a simile to be perfect must both illustrate and ennoble the subject’.

On Drama:

            Johnson considers the different aspects of the dramatic art: its nature, the unities, dramatic pleasure and the tragic - comedy. Drama must hold up ‘a faithful mirror of manners and of life’. It should present ‘human sentiments in human language’. A great play is not a story of a few men in one particular age, but through them, of all men in all ages: the actions, thoughts and passions.

            Among the three unities, Johnson says that only the unity of action is justified by reason, the union of the events of the plot into an inseparable whole. He accounts for the pleasure in drama as the natural human pleasure in imitation. He follows a very realistic approach on the tragic - comedy. There are two natural grounds to justify it:  the alternation of pleasure and pain in a play pleases by its variety and  it reflects life.

Practical Criticism:

            Johnson is the first English critic to attempt a systematic work in the field of practical criticism. His “Lives of the Poets” is a biographical - cum - critical account of fifty two poets from Cowley to Gray covering a period of a hundred years. It is as much a history of the English poetry of this period as a work of criticism.

The Value of his Criticism:

            Johnson is the last great critic of the neo - classical school. He has a code of conduct both for the writer and the critic. In his historical approach to an author’s work he questions the validity of the same rules for all ages. He pleads for suitable adjustments  in them in the light of the author’s environment. His other test of excellence – ‘the general and continued approbation of mankind’ (which he applies to Shakespeare) also disposes of the necessity of rules.

            Neo – Classicism stresses the means – the rules, as they are called – no less than the end. Johnson’s test stresses the end only.                        

Dr.Johnson

                                                              

Dr. Johnson wrote no critical treatise but he influenced his age no more than any other English critics of the past. His critical work consists of a dozen papers in “The Rambler”, the remarks on poetry in “Rasselas”, “The Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare” and “The Lives of the Poets”. According to him, criticism should rest on surer foundations.

            There were the rules of the ancients and those of the neo – classicists. But they were subject to change for ‘every new genius produces some innovation which subverts

the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established’ says Dr.Johnson. They could be divided into two categories – the fundamental and indispensable, based on nature and reason; and those that were  ‘merely useful and convenient’, deriving their force from earlier practice. No writer could bypass the former. But he was free to follow or not to follow the latter. To know whether a work has followed these essential principles or not, Johnson subjects the work to the test of time. The general and continued approbation of mankind is the best evidence of its merit. No doubt, Johnson is a neo – classical critic but never stands for a blind reverence to authority, ancient or modern. He is for liberty.

Historical Approach:

            Literature according to Johnson is not written to a fixed pattern but is conditioned by the writer’s age and environment. Though Dryden and Pope have attributed the success of writers to the genius of the age, Johnson for the first time makes it an essential principle of criticism. To judge rightly of an author, he says that we must transfer ourselves to his time and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries and what were his means of supplying them. The historical estimate is an important factor in the real estimate of an author. George Watson says that Johnson is an unambiguously historical critic and the true father of historical criticism in English.

            In his “Life of Milton” Johnson writes about poetry. He says that poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason. In this definition he combines both the nature of the poetic art (that it imitates truth or life) and its function (that it affords pleasure). In the imitation of truth it is guided by reason and in affording pleasure by imagination. Johnson says in “The Preface to Shakespeare” that the end of writing is to instruct and the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. The truth of poetry is universal truth and it has a universal appeal. It ‘pleases many and pleases long!’

On kinds of Poetry, Versification and Poetic Diction

            Following the French neoclassicists, Johnson considers the epic superior to all other forms of verse. Epic poetry teaches the most important truths by the most pleasing percepts. Among the verse forms the Pastoral and the Pindaric ode made the least impression on him. According to him, these forms of poetry may not please the readers of the modern age. As regards the versification, he is for regular metres and rhymes. Since metre or rhythm alone is insufficient to make a verse musical, he prefers the heroic couplet to all other stanza forms. He also defines the language of poetry. ‘Not all words are fit for poetry’, says Johnson. ‘Words too familiar or too remote’ defeat the purpose of a poet. Hence he excludes words of both these categories from the language of poetry. He says that ‘a simile to be perfect must both illustrate and ennoble the subject’.

On Drama:

            Johnson considers the different aspects of the dramatic art: its nature, the unities, dramatic pleasure and the tragic - comedy. Drama must hold up ‘a faithful mirror of manners and of life’. It should present ‘human sentiments in human language’. A great play is not a story of a few men in one particular age, but through them, of all men in all ages: the actions, thoughts and passions.

            Among the three unities, Johnson says that only the unity of action is justified by reason, the union of the events of the plot into an inseparable whole. He accounts for the pleasure in drama as the natural human pleasure in imitation. He follows a very realistic approach on the tragic - comedy. There are two natural grounds to justify it:  the alternation of pleasure and pain in a play pleases by its variety and  it reflects life.

Practical Criticism:

            Johnson is the first English critic to attempt a systematic work in the field of practical criticism. His “Lives of the Poets” is a biographical - cum - critical account of fifty two poets from Cowley to Gray covering a period of a hundred years. It is as much a history of the English poetry of this period as a work of criticism.

The Value of his Criticism:

            Johnson is the last great critic of the neo - classical school. He has a code of conduct both for the writer and the critic. In his historical approach to an author’s work he questions the validity of the same rules for all ages. He pleads for suitable adjustments  in them in the light of the author’s environment. His other test of excellence – ‘the general and continued approbation of mankind’ (which he applies to Shakespeare) also disposes of the necessity of rules.

            Neo – Classicism stresses the means – the rules, as they are called – no less than the end. Johnson’s test stresses the end only.                        

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Criticism

            According to Dryden, a critic has to understand that a writer writes to his own age and people of which he himself is a product. He advocates a close study of the ancient models not to imitate them blindly as a thorough going neo-classicist would do but to recapture their magic to treat them as a torch to enlighten our own passage. It is the spirit of the classics that matters more than their rules. Yet these rules are not without their value, for without rules, there can be no art. Besides invention (the disposition of a work), there are two other parts of a work – design (or arrangement) and expression. Dryden mentions the appropriate rules laid down by Aristotle. But it is not the observance of rules that makes a work great but its capacity to delight and transport. It is not the business of criticism to detect petty faults but to discover those great beauties that make it immortal.

The Value of his criticism

            Dryden’s criticism is partly a restatement of the precepts of Aristotle, partly a plea for French neo-classicism and partly a deviation from both under the influence of Longinus and Saint Evremond. From Aristotle he learnt a respect for rules. French Neo-classicism taught him to prefer the epic to tragedy, to insist on a moral in it and many of the things. And to Longinus and Saint Evremond he owed a respect for his own judgement.

            Dryden is a liberal classicist who would adjust the rules of the ancients to the genius of the age, to which a poet writes.

JOHN DRYDEN

JOHN DRYDEN (1631 – 1700)

            John Dryden is rightly considered as “the father of English Criticism”. He was the first to teach the English people to determine the merit of composition upon principles. With Dryden, a new era of criticism began. Before, Dryden, there were only occasional utterances on the critical art. (Eg. Ben Jonson and Philip Sidney) Though Dryden’s criticism was of scattered nature; he paid attention to almost all literary forms and expressed his views on them. Except An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden wrote no formal treatise on criticism. His critical views are found mostly in the prefaces to his poetical works or to those of others.

Nature of poetry

            Dryden upholds Aristotle’s definition of poetry as a process of imitation. It imitates facts past or present, popular beliefs, superstitions and things in their ideal form. Dryden defends Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural founded on popular beliefs. For, it is still an imitation though of other men’s fancies. According to him, poetry and painting are not only true imitations of nature but of the best nature (i.e) a much greater criticism.

Function of poetry

            The final end of poetry, according to Dryden is delight and transport rather than instruction. To realize it, it does not merely imitate life, but offers its own of it – ‘a beautiful resemblance of the whole’. The poet is neither a teacher nor a bare imitator – a photographer – but a creator. He is one who, with life or nature as his raw material, produces a new thing altogether, resembling the original in its basis but different from it in the super structure – a work of art rather than a copy.

Dramatic poetry

            Drama claimed most of Dryden’s attention.On the introduction of unpalatable or incredible scenes such as battles and deaths on the stage, he says that death can never be imitated to a just height and it can be avoided. He sees nothing wrong in other physical action – battles, duels and the like.

            Dryden does not subscribe to the accepted interpretation of the three Unities; that the plot should be single, the time of action twenty four hours, and the place the same everywhere (where scene leads to scene in unbroken chain). He favours the weaving of a sub plot into the main plot. He feels that the plot time can be increased a little more to allow for greater maturity of the plot. In the same way, the unity of place cannot be maintained as the time taken by the events of the play determines the location of the scene and the unity of place can be waived. Dryden considers the unites of Time and Place too rigorous and they leave little scope for the development of plot and character.

Tragedy

            Dryden’s definition of tragedy is the same as Aristotle’s: ‘an imitation of one, entire, great and probable action; not told but represented, which by moving in us fear and pity is conducive to the purging of those two emotions in our minds’. Dryden merely follows Aristotle and Horace in his remarks on the tragic hero and other characters in Tragedy. Dryden has no use for the group of characters called ‘chorus’ in the Greek Tragedy.

Comedy

            Dryden has not much of his own to say on comedy. Following Aristotle, he calls it ‘a representation of human life in inferior persons and low subjects. To the question whether comedy delights or instructs, Dryden says that the first end of comedy is delight and instruction only the second. The persons in comedy are of a lower quality, the action is little and the faults and vices are but the sallies of youth and frailties of human nature; they are not premeditated crimes. Dryden wanted English comedy to be more refined than it was. According to him, Ben Jonson had only specialized in ‘humour’ and what it lacked was ‘wit’. As repartee is ‘one of the chiefest graces of comedy’, the greatest pleasure of the audience is ‘a  chance exchange of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed’. Beaumont and Fletcher were adept in the art. What Dryden wanted in comedy was ‘refined laughter’ rather than the coarse one arising out of the display of ‘humours’ or eccentric traits in individuals. While in a comedy of ‘humours’ the spectators laughed at the ‘humourous’ character, in a comedy of wit (or comedy of manners as it grew) they laughed with the witty one.

Epic

            Dryden is with the French critics in considering the epic superior to the tragedy. He asks, ‘what virtue is there in a tragedy which is not contained in an epic poem. He stresses that the epic is certainly the greatest work of human nature. Aristotle had preferred the tragedy to the epic. Regarding the visual appeal of the tragedy, Dryden urges three points: that it is the actor’s work as much as the poet’s and so the poet alone cannot deserve credit for it that the stage is handicapped to show many things – big armies, for instance – in words; and that while we have leisure to digest what we read in the epic, we miss many beauties of a play in the performance. Dryden disagrees with Aristotle again in insisting on a moral in the epic.

Satire

            In the first instance, the satire must have unity of design, confining itself for that purpose to one subject or principally one. In other words, the satirist should choose one vice or folly for his target, as the epic poet chooses one character for his specialpraise and make all others subservient to it as the epic poet does the other characters. In the same way, he should extol ‘someone precept of moral virtue’. For the manner of the satire, Dryden would prefer ‘fine raillery’.

Criticism

            According to Dryden, a critic has to understand that a writer writes to his own age and people of which he himself is a product. He advocates a close study of the ancient models not to imitate them blindly as a thorough going neo-classicist would do but to recapture their magic to treat them as a torch to enlighten our own passage. It is the spirit of the classics that matters more than their rules. Yet these rules are not without their value, for without rules, there can be no art. Besides invention (the disposition of a work), there are two other parts of a work – design (or arrangement) and expression. Dryden mentions the appropriate rules laid down by Aristotle. But it is not the observance of rules that makes a work great but its capacity to delight and transport. It is not the business of criticism to detect petty faults but to discover those great beauties that make it immortal.

The Value of his criticism

            Dryden’s criticism is partly a restatement of the precepts of Aristotle, partly a plea for French neo-classicism and partly a deviation from both under the influence of Longinus and Saint Evremond. From Aristotle he learnt a respect for rules. French Neo-classicism taught him to prefer the epic to tragedy, to insist on a moral in it and many of the things. And to Longinus and Saint Evremond he owed a respect for his own judgement.

            Dryden is a liberal classicist who would adjust the rules of the ancients to the genius of the age, to which a poet writes.

WHY THE NOVEL MATTERS-D.H.LAWRENCE

WHY THE NOVEL MATTERS – D.H. LAWRENCE
D.H. Lawrence introduces his views of the novel to the readers by referring to the common thinking among people that they are a body with a spirit or a soul or a mind in it. A proverb to this effect, namely, “A sound body in a sound mind” has been framed. According to D.H. Lawrence, this idea of ourselves as a body with a spirit or a soul or a mind in it is a funny superstition.
D.H. Lawrence asks why we should make a difference between the hand that writes and the mind that directs the hand to write. He feels that the hand is as full of life, and that it learns and knows as many things as the mind is and does. Our hand is alive upto the finger tips but the pen with which we write is not alive.
D.H. Lawrence argues that every bit of our body, like the hand or the hair, or the skin is alive. As he says, ‘whatever is me alive is me’. We are completely wrong in comparing any part of our body with a bottle or a jug or a tin can, or a vessel of clay because while each tiny part of our body is full of life as the whole body, a bottle or a jug is inanimate.
That every bit of our body is alive is what we know when one is a novelist. This idea is liable to become unknown, to us if we are a philosopher, or a scientist, or a stupid person.
A person speaks about souls in heaven. But a novelist talks about paradise in the palm of our hand, or at the end of our nose because he feels the existence of life during his life time undisturbed by what happens to him after life.
According to Lawrence, life is the most important aspect of life. Anything that is living is certainly more amazing than a dead thing. A living dog is better than a dead lion though a living lion is better than a living dog.
D.H. Lawrence says that he is not simply a soul or a body or mind, or intelligence, or glands. He is the sum total of all these and greater than all these. Since, possesses them within himself. He as a man alive, is a novelist. So as a novelist he is greater than and superior to the scientist, the philosopher and the poet, since they deal with only a part of man’s body, whereas the novelist deals with the whole body.
Even the Bible is a great confused novel. It is not about one man alive but a long list of men alive. Even God is another man alive. Since, he throws the tablets of stone at Mose’s head.
D.H. Lawrence desires to stimulate people in all possible directions. All things change but even change is not absolute the whole or complete nature is a ‘strong assembly of apparently incongruous parts, slipping part one another.
Man constantly undergoes changes and a man today is not exactly what he was yesterday and he will also be entirely different tomorrow. Even the woman loved by a man constantly undergoes changes and he continues to love her because of the change.
In this novel, the characters do nothing but live. They have to live but not according to any pattern, good or bad or volatile, because once they shape themselves into a pattern, they cease to live and novel falls dead. Similarly, in life we have got to live or we are nothing.
The exact meaning of living is like the meaning of being. People go into the desert to seek God, or money, or wine, or woman, or song, or water or political reform or votes. One can never predict one’s choices in life. It is as sudden as rain in summer and none can say when it will come. In this great confusion, disorder and unpredictability we need a guide.
The novel tells us what a man alive does and when a man becomes a dead man in life. It tells us, for instance, how a man alive loves a woman, and how a dead man in life courts her; how a man alive eats his dinner and how a dead man in life munches it. It tells us how a man alive shoots his enemy and how dead man in life throws bombs mercilessly at men, who are neither his enemies nor friends, and therefore becomes a criminal.
The novel is the best guide which helps us to live, without getting ourselves unnecessarily disturbed by the theory of right and wrong, good or bad, which are always there. Right and wrong are not constant but relative. Since what is right in one case becomes wrong in another. In the novel, we see a man dying because of his goodness and another person dying because of his wickedness. The idea of right and wrong is an instinct generating from the consciousness of man affecting his body, mind and spirit.
The existence of anything, namely, body or mind, or spirit separately does not make life, but the wholeness of man alive and a woman alive constitutes life. Only the novel explains the dead man and dead woman in life, the novel is the one bright book of life and surpasses all other books, such as philosophy, science and poetry.