Course:
M.A.
Sem: 1
Topic
of the assignment: Coleridge’s view on poem and poetry a critical analysis
Year:
2015-17
Enrollment
no: PG 15101005
Submitted
to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English
Mahaaraja
Krishkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Introduction:
Coleridge is poet and philosopher. The work of Coleridge
naturally divided into three classes;
His poem synthesis poet’s emotion feeling. Coleridge is more musical than
Wordsworth. In his poem include Imagination is very important for Coleridge ,
poem is synthetic and magical power. The difference is between the combination
of those elements and objects. A poem has well known rhyme like; of the days in
the several months,
“Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November”
Coleridge was deals with “persons and character supernatural’ According
to Coleridge he also says that “Distinction resulting from the poetic genius
itself which sustains and modifies, thoughts, and emotions of the poet’s own
mind”
Poetry for Coleridge is an activity of the poet’s mind. The poem is
merely one of the forms of its expression; According to Coleridge poetry should
be ‘best world in best order’ and it delight from the ‘harmonious whole’
For example: human body
Coleridge’s critical analysis about the poem
and poetry: his work Biographia Literaria is a great literary work, it has occupied a
permanent position in the whole range of English literary criticism, and the
critic discusses many important points form that. He has drawn some striking
difference between poem and poetry. However, at the end of it we are not
absolutely sure about the exact remarking between poem and poetry in its
essence they are supposed to be the same.
In chapter XIV he puts a large number of questions regarding the nature
and function of poetry and later on he answered them. He believes that metre is
considered to be essential part of poetry but not come up with exact definition
of the poetry. His comments on poem and poetry are artistic, philosophical and
psychological.
At first it is necessary to know how Coleridge distinguishes a poem from
prose composition. Coleridge says that a poem contains the elements as a prose
composition. Both of them use words so there is no difference between a poem
and a prose composition, in this respect Coleridge says-“ a poem contains the
same elements as a prose composition” but one difference is to be noticed here
that metre or rhyme both is used in the poem and they are not used in prose
composition.
According to Coleridge the immediate purpose of a poem is to give
pleasure to the reader and another thing is that everything else in the poem is
supposed to be secondary it means Coleridge’s prime aim is reader. On the other
side the immediate purpose is to communicate truth, a poem must possess an
organic unity wherein metre, rhyme everything is used in a poem an artistic way
while they are not used in the prose. Is metre is used superficially it can be
a poem, but a poem cannot please us if there is no organic unity Coleridge
thinks the main aim of poetry is only one and that is to give pleasure.
On the other hand Coleridge does not regard metre as essential for poetry
he clearly says that poetry of highest kind may exist without metre.
He also believes that metre to
be useful and necessary for writing poetry, he refers to Plato, Burnet, Jeremy
who wrote without metre. Coleridge believes that rhyme and metre are essential
in order to memorize what is written and to develop a certain kind of
attachment to it by getting the feeling of the words through a particular rhyme
or rhythm.
Coleridge distinguishes a poem from in his ‘Biographia Literaria’ by
saying that poetry is a wider than a poem poetry is an activity of poet’s min
but a poem is merely one of the form of expression. Poetic creativity is
basically an activity of imagination he identifies imagination with the soul
of poetry.
This distinction between
poetry an poem is not clear to the core we are left with more questions than
answers at the end of it we find, to sum up we can say that Coleridge’s
distinction between poem and poetry is not clear enough by the word poetry he
means all kind of imaginative activity. Only in his sense he has drawn a
distinction between a ‘poem’ and ‘poetry’
A poem according to Coleridge
contains the same elements as a prose composition because both using the words.
The difference between a poem and a prose composition cannot then lay in the
medium for each employs the same medium,
i.e. words
It must therefore “consist in a different combination of them in
consequent of a different object being proposed”
Further he says that “a poem is that species of composition which is
opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure not
truth”
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 that of a
poem.
Poetry is a kind of activity
which can be engaged in painters or philosophers or scientists and is not
confined to those who employ metrical language or even to those who employ
language of any kind; poetry in this larger sense brings ‘the whole soul of the
man’ into activity with each faculty playing its proper part according to its
relative worth and dignity. This take place whenever the ‘secondary
imagination’ comes into operation.
Coleridge
points out that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre and even
without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem. The quality of the prose in
this writings is equal to that of high poetry; he also asserts that the poem of
any length neither can be nor ought to be all poetry, then the question is what
the poetry is? How is it different from poem?
To quote Coleridge what is poetry? Is so nearly the same question with
that what is poem? The answer to the one is involved in the solution of the
other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself which
sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, emotions of the poet’s own mind,
thus the difference between poem and poetry is not given in clear terms.
John Shawcross writes:
“This distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not clear, and instead
of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he
proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the imagination”
This is so because poetry for Coleridge is an activity of the poet’s mind
and poem is merely one of the form of expression, a verbal expression of that
activity and poetic activity is basically an activity of imagination,
imagination is the prime source for the poet without that poet cannot write.
Poem is nature function as Coleridge
explaining his idea and view towards it by saying that poem is a heart of
reality work that poetry convey the feeling by rhyme and that took place as
golden shield. A poem therefore may be defined as species of composition which
is opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure
not truth and from all other species it is discriminated by proposing to itself
such delight from the whole as it compatible with a distinct gratification from
each component part.
Conclusion:
According to Coleridge he says poem and poetry is not any length he given
a new criticism and this was provide by Coleridge in the ‘Biographia
Literaria.’ Biographia Literaria is a fashion of autobiography, literary
criticism and philosophical theory. Fact and fiction both are very important
part of literature thus; Coleridge is the first English critic based his
literary criticism on philosophical principles.
For him ‘art is more important’ than any other thing.
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