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ENHANCE YOUR QUALIFICATION, ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. 2 M.A.English

Literary Criticism and

Approaches and Critical Critical Approaches- I Course Code: MAE 601

Semester: First

- I e-Lesson: 4

SLM Unit: 5 & 6

https://www.google.com/search?q=Greek+theatre www.cuidol.in Unit-5,6 (MAE601) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL An Introduction to Romantic

Criticism 3 OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION

Student will be introduced to Romantic Criticism In this unit the student will be able to understand Criticism Preface Student will be introduced to Preface To Lyrical To as a Manifesto of Ballads as a Literary Criticism Romanticism

Student will be introduced to Preface To Lyrical Student will be able to understand Preface To Lyrical Ballads as a Manifesto of Ballads as a Manifesto of Romanticism Romanticism

Student will also be able to understand what Preface To lyrical Ballads deals with

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Romantic Criticism

Introduction to Preface To Lyrical Ballads Approaches The main content of Preface To Lyrical Literary Criticism and Critical

Ballads

- I

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English literary criticism of the Romantic era is most closely associated with the writings of in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) and in his Biographia Literaria (1817).

Modern critics disagree on whether the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge constituted a major break with the criticism of their predecessors or if it should more properly be characterized as a continuation of the aesthetic theories of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century German and English writers. Book Review Examples to Help You Write

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In 1800, in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth 6 issued his famous proclamation about the nature of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” With this statement, Wordsworth posited a very different view of poetry than was standard at the time, shifting the center of attention from the work as a reflection or imitation of reality to the artist, and the artist's relationship to the work.

Poetry would henceforth be considered an expressive rather than a mimetic art. Although the analogy of art as a mirror was still used, M. H. Abrams reports that the early Romantics suggested that the mirror was turned inward to reflect the poet's state of mind, rather than outward to reflect external reality. www.cuidol.in Unit-5,6 (MAE601) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL ROMANTIC CRITICISM

7 in his “On Poetry in General” (1818) addressed the changes in this analogy “by combining the mirror with a lamp, in order to demonstrate that a poet reflects a world already bathed in an emotional light he has himself projected,” according to Abrams.

Additionally, music replaced painting as the art form considered most like poetry by the Romantics. Abrams explains that the German writers of the 1790s considered music “to be the art most immediately expressive of spirit and emotion,” and both Hazlitt and John Keble made similar connections between music and poetry in their critical writings.

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8 Many of the principles associated with early nineteenth-century English criticism were first articulated by late eighteenth-century German Romantics. René Wellek has documented the contributions of , Friedrich and , F. W. J. Schelling, , and other important figures of the period. Novalis, for example, shared the English Romantics' belief that the poet was a member of a special breed, “exalted beyond any other human being.” Similarly, Jochen Schulte-Sasse, in his comprehensive history of German literary criticism, traced the development of various elements of Romantic thought that appeared in Germany either prior to or concurrent with similar developments in England

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The literary reviews of the early nineteenth century, most notably the and the , participated in the formulation of critical theory as well. Although earlier reviews were little more than advertisements for the books being considered, or “thinly concealed puff for booksellers' wares,” in the words of Terry Eagleton, the change in reviewing style in the Romantic period was not much of an improvement.

According to Eagleton: “Criticism was now explicitly, unabashedly political: the journals tended to select for review only those works on which they could loosely peg lengthy ideological pieces, and their literary judgements, [sic] buttressed by the authority of anonymity, were rigorously subordinated to their politics.”

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John O. Hayden reports that reviews were tainted not only by politics, but by “malicious allusions to the private lives of the authors,” and concedes that “the critical values of the reviewers were neither uniform nor well established.”

Coleridge's unhappiness with the vicious, opinionated reviews in the periodicals prompted his attempt to devise a critical method that would supplant mere opinions with reviews based on a set of sound literary principles. However, because such norms and conventions were associated with rationality—the very target of most —criticism needed to head in a...

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It is a text of literary criticism It is considered the Manifesto of Romanticism

It deals with :

 The content of poetry  The language of poetry  The features of the poet  The definition of poetry

Preface to The Lyrical www.cuidol.in Unit-5,6 (MAE601) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS 12 The poet chooses to relate and to describe incidents and situations from common life

Everything expressed implies the use of imagination

Interest is added by tracing events and situations in the way people associate ideas in a state of excitement.

Low and rustic life is chosen

Poetry should present ordinary things in an unusual aspect

Preface to The Lyrical

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The poet should use a selection of language really used by men.

The language has to be familiar, plain and simple.

The poet should convey feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions

The language of low classes should be purified from defects and disgusts

Preface to The Lyrical

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He is a man speaking to men

He has a more lively sensibility, enthusiasm and tenderness than common men

He has got a greater knowledge of and a more comprehensive soul

He contemplates volitions and passions in the Universe

He creates passions where he does not find them

Preface to The Lyrical

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.It is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

.It is originated from emotion recollected in tranquility

.Its ultimate goal is pleasure

. It is based on experience

Lyrical Ballads by William Wordswo

www.cuidol.in Unit-5,6 (MAE601) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS 16

1. What does Preface To Lyrical ballads deal with? a) With the content of poetry c) Men of drama b) content of rhyme d) content of philosophy

2. What is the description of Preface To Lyrical ballads? a) Incidents from poet’s poetry c) Incidents from poets’s life b) Definition of Poetry d) Incidents & situation from common life

3. What kind of language a poet should use? a) Literary Language c) A language used by a poet b) Metaphorical Language d) A language used by men

4.What should be the role of a poet? a) As a literary man c) As a poet b) As a master d) He should be a man speaking to men

Answers: 1. a) 2. d) 3. d) 4. d)

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17 It deals with :

 The content of poetry  The language of poetry  The features of the poet  The definition of poetry

The poet chooses to relate and to describe incidents and situations from common life Everything expressed implies the use of imagination Interest is added by tracing events and situations in the way people associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life is chosen Poetry should present ordinary things in an unusual aspect

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18 1.Q What is Wordsworth's theory of poetry?

2. Q What are the tenets of Romantic Criticism? Explain with reference to any critic of your choice.

3. Q How does Wordsworth describe the language he claims to have selected for his poems? How does he describe the language used by "many modern writers"?

4. Q How is the poet "chiefly distinguished from other men"? What characterizes his "passions and thoughts and feelings"? With what are they connected?

5. Q Examine Wordsworth’s view on creative process and the use of language as reflected in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions ...

www.cuidol.in Unit-5,6 (MAE601) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL REFERENCES 19

David Daiches : Critical Approaches to Literature, 2nd ed., Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001.

M. H. Abrams : A Glossary of Literary Terms, Singapore: Harcourt Asia Pvt. Ltd., 2000.

Rene Wellek : A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Vols. I-IV, London: Jonathan Cape, 1958.

M.A.R. Habib : A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Patricia Waugh : Literary Theory & Criticism: An Oxford Guide, Delhi: OUP, 2006. The Republic: Book X - SparkNotes www.sparknotes.com › philosophy › republic › section10

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