William Wordsworth As a Critic.
Wordsworth was primarily a poet and not a critic. He has left
behind him no comprehensive treatise on criticism. The bulk of his literary
criticism is small yet "the core of his literary criticism is as inspired as his
poetry". There is the same utter sincerity, earnestness, passion and truth in
both. He knew about poetry in the real sense, and he has not said even a single
word about poetry, says Chapman, "which is not valuable, and worth thinking
over".
Wordsworth's criticism is of far-reaching historical
significance. When Wordsworth started, it was the Neo-classical criticism, which
held the day. Critics were pre-occupied with poetic genres, poetry was judged on
the basis of rules devised by Aristotle and other ancients, and interpreted by
the Italian and French critics. They cared for rules, for methods, for outward
form, and had nothing to say about the substance, the soul of poetry. Wordsworth
is the first critic to turn from the poetry to its substance; builds a theory of
poetry, and gives an account of the nature of the creative process. His emphasis
is on novelty, experiment, liberty, spontaneity, inspiration and imagination, as
contrasted with the classical emphasis on authority, tradition, and restraint.
His 'Preface' is an unofficial manifesto of the English Romantic Movement giving
it a new direction, consciousness and program. After Wordsworth had written,
literary criticism could never be the same as before.
Wordsworth through his literary criticism demolishes the old
and the faulty and opens out new vistas and avenues. He discards the artificial
and restricted forms of approved 18th century poetry. Disgusted by the,
"gaudiness and inane phraseology", of many modern writers, he criticizes poets
who:
"… separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and
indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish
food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation".
Discarding formal finish and perfection, he stresses vivid
sensation and spontaneous feelings. He says:
"All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings."
Scott James says:
"He discards Aristotelian doctrine. For him, the plot, or
situation, is not the first thing. It is the feeling that matters."
Reacting against the artificiality of 18th century poetry, he
advocates simplicity both in theme and treatment. He advocates a deliberate
choice of subject from "humble and rustic life". Instead of being pre-occupied
with nymphs and goddesses, he portrays the emotions of collage girls and
peasants. There is a healthy realism in his demand that the poet should use,
"the language of common men", and that he should aim at keeping, "the reader in
the company of flesh and blood."
There is, no doubt, his views in this respect are open to
criticism. Scott James points out, the flesh and blood and emotions of a
townsman are not more profound. Besides, by confining himself wholly to rustic
life, he excluded many essential elements in human experience. Thus, he narrowed
down his range.
"His insistence on the use of a selection of language really
used by men is always in danger of becoming trivial and mean."
There is also, no doubt, that he is guilty of over-emphasis
every now and then, and that it is easy to pick holes in his theories. Coleridge
could easily demolish his theory of poetic diction and demonstrate that a
selection of language as advocated by Wordsworth would differ in no way from the
language of any other man of commonsense.
All the same, the historical significance of his criticism is
very great. It served as a corrective to the artificial and inane phraseology
and emphasized the value of a simpler and more natural language. By advocating
simplicity in theme, he succeeded in enlarging the range of English poetry. He
attacked the old, outdated and trivial and created a taste of the new and the
significant. He emphasized the true nature of poetry as an expression of emotion
and passion, and so dealt a death blow to the dry intellectuality of
contemporary poetry. In this way, he brought about a revolution in the theory of
poetry, and made popular acceptance of the new poetry, the romantic poetry,
possible.
Unlike other romantics, Wordsworth also lays stress on the
element of thought in poetry. He has a high conception of his own calling and so
knows that great poetry cannot be produced by a careless or thoughtless person.
He says:
"Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced
on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual
organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply."
Poetic process is a complex one. Great poetry is not produced
on the spur of the moment. It is produced only when the original emotion is
contemplated in tranquility, and the poet passions anew.
Wordsworth goes against the neo-classic view that poetry
should both instruct and delight, when he stresses that the function of poetry
is to give pleasure, a noble and exalted kind of pleasure which results from
increased understanding and sympathy. If at all it teaches, it does so only
indirectly, by purifying the emotions, uplifting the soul, and bringing it
nearer to nature.
The credit for democratizing the conception of the poet must
go to Wordsworth. According to him, the poet is essentially a man who differs
from other men not in kind, but only in degree. He has a more lively
sensibility, a more comprehensive soul, greater powers of observation,
imagination and communication. He is also a man who has thought long and deep.
Wordsworth emphasizes his organic oneness as also the need for his emotional
identification with other men.
We can do no better than conclude this account of the
achievement of Wordsworth as a critic with the words of Rene Wellek:
"Wordsworth thus holds a position in the history of criticism
which must be called ambiguous or transitional. He inherited from neo-classicism
a theory of the imitation of nature to which he gives, however, a specific
social twist: he inherited from the 18th century a view of poetry as passion and
emotion which he again modified as … "recollection in tranquility". He takes up
rhetorical ideas about the effect of poetry but extends and amplifies them into
a theory of the social effects of literature … he also adopts a theory of poetry
in which imagination holds the central place as a power of unification and
ultimate insight into the unity of the world. Though Wordsworth left only a
small body of criticism, it is rich in survivals, suggestions, anticipations and
personal insights."
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