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Bloom's Critical Approach to the Romantic Poetry ISSN 0974-0368 Bloom's Critical approach to the Romantic Poetry Bloom's Critical approach to the Romantic Poetry Saintsburry observes, are in fact a fresh formation of the classical restraint, definiteness, proportion, and form, against the romantic vogue, the Romantic Fantasy. (1911: 477) Arnold was dangerously close to Siddhartha Singh the Romantic poetry of the early nineteenth century to see it impartially. Arnold's emphasis on the classical restraint of form does not allow him Harold Bloom begins his career of antithetical criticism, directly to evaluate the imaginative and visionary power of romantic poetry. opposing the critical inheritance of T. S. Eliot, in the late fifties with his Harold Bloom does not entirely reject Arnoldian criticism. In Shelley's published dissertation Shelley's Mythmaking (1959). Bloom begins Mythmaking, Bloom Is quite conscious of the Arnoldian formulation. developing his own vision of the nature and value of literature, which is He begins with the mythopoeic form and craftsmanship in Shelley's both intellectually unique and socially daring. It is his intense predilection poetry, which according to Bloom, reaches a higher level of expression for the Romantic tradition which formulates his entire critical writings. because of the fusion of the poet's vision with it. (Bloom, 1959:1-10) Unlike his predecessors, who challenged the romantic Inheritance in Thus the importance of form is not altogether neglected by Bloom. the name of classical ideals. Bloom installs Romanticism at the centre It is T. S. Eliot who mounts a scathing attack on the romantic of post-renaissance English literature. Matthew Arnold advanced critical poets. T.S. Eliot, echoing Aristotle, proposes an "impersonal" conception opposition to the Romantic Inheritance In the 1850s. Some later critics of art, which is almost belligerently anti-Romantic. In the famous essay under his Influence, Including the American scholar In/Ing Babbitt, whose 'Tradition and the Individual Talent", (2001 )which first appeared in the book Rousaeau and Romanticism (1919), condemned the Romantic Egoist, Oct-Dec, 1919 (in two parts) and was reprinted in The Sacred Movement as an Irresponsible "pilgrimage In the void that had licensed M/ood (1920) and Selected Essays (1932), he lays down the concept: self-indulgent escapism and rationalist aggression." (Drabble, 2005: ... the poet has not a "personality" to express but a particular medium, 873)Hls student T.S. Eliot continued the anti-romantic campaign, which which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impression and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. was further intensified by Eliot's followers. (2001:7) The basic concern of this paper is to shed light on Bloom's Eliot, In the same essay challenges Wordsworthian formula that defence of the romantic poetry and consequently to highlight the "emotion recollected In tranquility" Is an Inexact fonmula. For it is neither tendency to humanize and secularize art in Romantic poetry - an emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquility, endeavour that seems to guide Bloom's critical thought. The concept (ibid., 8) Eliot does not leave any possibility for the Romantic poet as of humanism, which Bloom explores, is apocalyptic. "Apocalypse", he finally concludes: from the Greek word "apokalypsis" meaning "revelation", or "disclosure". ... poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, Is associated with the New Testament. The Book of Revelation contains it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality.... a series of visions and prophecies concerning the "end of the world". (A The emotion of art is impersonal, (ibid., 8-9) Dictionary, 1989: 492)Bloom intents to highlight the concept of Eliot fixes the guideline for critics also: apocalyptic humanism as the strength of the romantic poet. It makes Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the the romantic poet liable to the status and role of the poet seer or poet poet but upon the poetry, (ibid., 5) Eliot sees progress of an artist in his complete surrender of the self to prophet. "the tradition". He wants to propose that if the poet does not surrender In his famous 'Preface' of 1853, Arnold declares that the eternal to the tradition he is immature. Thus Eliot declares that romanticism is object of poetry is "action", or more precisely human action (Wimsatt an immature form of art as it puts the poetic self at its at its center. and Brooks,1957: 440) In his Augustan tone, which favours form of (See "What is a Classic"). Eliot proposes that romanticism, being poetry, Arnold, as a "strenuous champ of cultural classicism", (ibid., opposite to classicism, lacks in classicist qualities such as maturity 440) proposes, "All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting action, of mind, manners and language. Eliot finds classicism leading to "the penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situation; this done, everything perfection of the common style" (Ibid.,102). Eliot's apposition between else will follow". (Ibid., 438). Arnold's chief critical doctrines as the poet and his poem can be seen as a leading idea that governs the Ut0ny Ptnp0otlv$ Vol. I, No. II, July 2006 30 Literary Perspectives Vol. I, No. II, July 2006 31 siddhartha Singh Bloom's Critical approach to the Romantic Poetry New Criticism. Eliot can be considered a precursor of the New Criticism. the three important books: Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Eliot says in "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama": Practical Criticism (1929) by the English critic, I.A. Richards, and ... Wordsworth and Browning hammered out forms for thcmMlvet - Understanding Poetry (1938) by the Americans Cieanth Brooks and personal forms,..; but no man can Invent a form, areata a tastt tor It, Robert Penn Warren. These are foundational texts in their shared and perfect It too. Tennyson, who might unquestionably havs been insistence on the special nature of the literary artifact. The New Critics a consummate master of minor forms, tooK to tuming out large patterns emphasize that readers need to adjust their reading strategy to on a machine. As for Keats and Shelley, they were too young to be accommodate the difference between literary and non-literary language. Judged, and they were trying one after another. (Ibid., 51) Thus the poet's role Is pushed back and what remains is the autonomy Eliot raises very significant Issues; the Invention of a personal of the literary text and Its language. Stephen Matterson puts it thus% form, the creation of a taste for It and the perfection of the personal When approaching the text, readers need to focus on the "system of relationships" that are operating within the text, rather than on those form. It means that, for Eliot form Is a prerequisite for the content, that may operate between the text and the world beyond Its whereas In the romantic poetry content Is the prerequisite to the form. boundaries... this system ensures that the literary artifact Is This Issue Is the starting point of Bloom, whose endeaveour Is to show autonomous. (2006: 170-171) that fomi In the romantics Is a trope; It Is a rhetorical or figurative Thus for the New Critics the poem cannot be translated from device. Thus Eliot becomes a new prophet of the "canonization". "Canon Is a body of writing established as authentic. The \em usually refers to one medium to another. It implies that the act of "paraphrasing is a biblical writings accepted as authorized. The temi Is applied to authors' heresy". Matterson further explains, "A poem's meaning is specific to work, which art accepted as genuine." (Cuddon,, 1996:108). In 'The the system of relationship within that poem". (Ibid., 171 )This idea is an Metaphysical Poets", Eliot proves the supsriorlty of ths metaphysical anathema to Harold Bloom who later develops a full-fledged theory of poets, who possessed a unification of sensibility over the English poets "intertextuallty" of other major textual approaches, associated with the of the eighteenth and nineteenth century: "In the seventeenth century a New Criticism, the "intentional fallacy" and the "affective fallacy" developed dissociation of sensibility set In, from which we have never in the essays published in 1946 and 1949 by Wimsatt in collaboration recovered".(2001:76) The phrase "dissociation of sensibility" Is seen with Monroe Beardsley, attack the romantic theory of poetic selfhood. In the poets who 'Ihink" but "do not feel their thought Immediately as Matterson nicely summarizes their arguments: the odour of rose". (Ibld.76) Thus, by this criterion Donne is being The tttiolc on both of that* paroalvad fallacies' was very much In canonized: "A thought to Donne was an experience; It modified his Una with the Naw Critical ballaf In the autonomy of the text. In The Intantlonal Fallacy (1948) Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that what sensibility". (Ibid. 76). But after Donne, If language of the poets Is an author intended was Irrelevant to Judgment of a literary text. "refined", feeling becomes crude or sometimes some poets think and Intention, they said, was neither available nor desirable In the formation feel by fits; therefore unbalanced. Thus the feeling, "the sensibility of literary judgement. That Is, there were two grounds for the attack expressed In the 'Country Churchyard'," Eliot says," Is cruder than on Intentlonallty. The first is that authorial intention Is never clear and that In 'The Coy Mistress'," and In "one or two passages of Shelley's may always be a matter of dispute. The second ground, and a more important one for the New Critics, was that to Invoke Intention was THumph of Ufa, In the Second Hyperion, there are traces of a struggle to threaten the Integrity of the text by Introducing the figure of the toward unification of sensibility.
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