Roll No: 15
Email Id: binagohil1995@gmail.com
Course -3: Literary theory and criticism
Subject for assignment: Theory of Biographia
Literaria, chapter: 14
Submitted: M.K Bhavnagar University (department of
English)
Biographia literaria, or in full “Biographia
Literaria; or Biographical sketches of ‘My Literary Life’ and opinion”, is an
autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ,which he published in
1817,in two volumes.
It has twenty-three (23) chapters.
In Biographia Literaria Coleridge focuses on these
main points:
1) Fancy and imagination
1) Greatest poetry is that which achives synthesis
among elements,emotions and attitudes.
3) Poem and poetry
4) Coleridge’s new technique of criticism is
called “appreciative criticism”
There is a two points of cardinal of poetry given
by S.T.Coleridge are as above:
1.
The power of exiting the sympathy of
the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature.
2.
The power of giving the interest of
novelty by the modifying colors of imagination.
The series of poems might be
composed of two sorts:
1.
The incidents and agents were to be in
part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the
dramatic truth of such emotions, supposing them read. And real in this sense
they have been to every human being who from whatever source of delusion, has
at anytime believed himself under supernatural agency.
2.
The characters and the incidence where
to be such as will be founding every village and its vicinity where there is a
meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they
present themselves.
The poem contains the same element as a
prose composition. But the difference is between the combination of those
element and objects aimed at in both the
composition. According to the difference of object will be the difference of
combination. It the object of poem may simply be to facilitate the memory to
recollect certain facts he would make use of certain artificial arrangement of
words with the help of meter. As a result composition will be a poem by meter,
or by rhyme.
In this the lowest sense, one might
attribute the name of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days in the
several months;
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November ,
& etc.
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In this idea originated the plan of
the ‘Lyrical ballad’ , in which it was decided that Coleridge’s endeavors
should be directed to person and character supernatural ,or at least romantic
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On the Wordsworth’s side the decision
is to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to thing of everyday
life, and directing it to loveliness and the wonders of words before us.
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With this view Coleridge wrote ‘THE ANCIENT OF MARINAR’ and was preparing
among other poems ‘THE DARK LADIE’ and ‘THE
CHRISTABLE’, in which he should have more nearly realized his ideal, than
he had done in his first attempt.
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But according to Coleridge
Wordsworth’s production had proved so much more successful and number of poem
so much more and greater also.
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vIMAGINATION
AND FANCY:
S.T.Coleridge
brought back the issue of imagination and fancy in his discussion of poetry in
Biographia Literaria.
Imagination: Divided into
two parts 1) primary
2)
secondary
1) parimary
: Uniting the objects of sense.
2) 2)
uniting the objects of senses with emotions and feelings.
Poetry id creation of secondary imagination.
To
Wordsworth, imagination was something taken for granted, especially in poets.
Coleridge while agreeing with Wordsworth’s premise, nevertheless, clarifies for
himself what imagination was; what was the difference between imagination and
fancy
Biobraphia Literaria
was one of the Coleridge’s main critical studies. In this work, he discussed
the elements of writing and what writing should be considered genius. Central
to the Bioraphia Literaria , is his discussion of imagination and fancy.
Coleridge ,too, rejected that the mind was ” Tubula Rasa”
on which external experience and sense impressions were in printed stored, and
recalled. Rather ,he believed that imagination is innate.
Coleridge
divides mind into imagination and fancy.
Imagination
is “active and dynamic”, fancy is “passive and mechanical”
Frederick Engell
one of the two original Marxist’s critics, has observed that the imagination
into then ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ draws a distinction between creative acts
that are intentional and will full and deliberate.
POETRY AND PROSE:
What is
poetry? Is also nearly same question what is poem? The answer to the one is
involved in solution of other. For it is a distinction resulting from the
poetic genius itself. Thus, the difference between poem and poetry is not given
clear term. To deifying poetry, proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of
the imagination. In other words we can say that ‘poetry’ is an activity of
poet’s mind, and poem is merely one of form of is expression of that activity
for imagination.
It manifests itself most clearly in the balance or
reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities such as:-
1)Of sameness with
difference
2) Of general, with image
3)The idea , with image
4)The individual, with
the representative
5)The sense of novelty
and freshness, with old and familiar object
6)A more than usual
state of emotion, with more than usual order
7) Judgment with
enthusiasm
Coleridge’s words:- “To establish the
principle of writing rather than to furnish rule about how to pass judgment on
what had been written by others”
According
to Coleridge a poem is that species of composition which is opposed to work of
science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth.
Coleridge is first English critic who based his literary criticism on
philosophical principles. Coleridge busied himself with the basic question of
“how it came to be there at all”. He was more interested in the creative
process that made it, what it was, then in the finished product
Each of
poetic writing has an immediate aim pleasure and ultimate aim Poetic writing
has pleasure as its immediate end. Yet, poetry may have some profound truth as
their ultimate purpose.
But as
it is immediate of poetry to produced pleasure and meter conduce it, poetry prefers
it to the language of prose.
From
this Coleridge proceeds to make a definition of what he calls ‘a legitimate
poem is one where each point contributed and must support each other to explain
each other.
According to Coleridge mere super addition of meter or rhyme does not
make a poem.
Coleridge
gives no real justification of the old statement of a poem of any length;
neither can be or ought to be all poetry
Poetry
for Coleridge is a wider category than of a poem, i.e. poetry is a kind of
activity which can be engaged in painters or philosophers and scientists and is
not confined to those who employ material language’ or even to those who employ
language of any kind.
Poetry
in this larger sense brings” the whole soul of man” into activity, with each
faculty playing its part. According to its relative worth and dignity this take
place whenever the “secondary imagination” comes into operation.
CRITICS VIEW ON BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA:
The
work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are
autobiographical elements, it is not a
straightforward or liner autobiography.
Instead, it is meditative.
Critics
have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria. Early reactions were that it
was a demonstration of Coleridge’s Opiate-driven decline into ill health. Recent re-evaluation have given it more credit .while contemporary
critics recognize the degree to which Coleridge borrowed from his sourse,they
also see in the work far more structure
and planning than is apparent on first glance.
In the
last section of the chapter 14 Coleridge considers to distinguish poem from
poetry. Coleridge points out that “Poetry of the highest kind may exist without
meter and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem”. He gives
example of the writing of Plato, Jeremy, Taylor and Bible. The quality of the
prose in this writing is equal to that of high poetry. He also asserts that the
poem of any length neither can, nor ought to be poetry.
