WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

           

     Wordsworth was not a born critic.  Neither by temperament nor by training he was qualified to be a critic.  Circumstances made him a critic.  Though he is not among the best Romantic critics, his criticism has value and significant of its own.  His Lyrical Ballads (1798) was attacked by the neo-classical critics of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Reviews.  So, he chose the field of criticism in sheer self-defence. The chief of his critical papers is the ‘preface’ to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads dated 1800.  

NEO-CLASSICAL POETIC DICTION:

     According to the neo-classical critics, the true poetic diction was, ‘a system of words at once refined from the diction of domestic use’.  It differed from the diction of prose by its ‘happy combinations of words’.

WORDSWORTH’S CONCEPT OF POETIC DICTION

     In the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, he says that  the principle object in his poems is to choose incidents and situations from rustic life.  He describes them in a language really used by men.  He says that in such a background only men speak from their own personal experience and convey their feelings in simple expressions.  Such a language is permanent and philosophical.

HIS CONCEPT OF POETRY :

     Wordsworth defines poetry as ‘the spontaneous over flow of powerful feelings’.  It takes its origin from ‘emotions recollected in tranquility’ (Eg.the solitary reaper)

A moving sight creates the spontaneous overflow of emotion.  These emotions are stored in the mind.  After sometime, they are recollected and expressed in the form of poetry.

     He also considered the function of poetry.  The poet is a man speaking to men.  His over-all object is pleasure.  The pleasure defends on the lesson that the poet teaches the reader through the beautiful structure of the poem.  By being subjective, he enters into the reader’s heart.  Since his feelings are saner, he makes the reader saner and purer.  Next poetry is the pursuit of truth- of  man’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.

     Finally poetry is a great force for good.  Wordsworth’s own object in writing poetry was to console the afflicted, to make the happy happier, to teach men to see, to think and feel and therefore to become more virtuous.  He says that  every great poet is a teacher.

THE VALUE OF HIS CRITICISM

     Wordsworth opposes neo-classicism, its test of a work by comparing it with the ancient models.  A work cannot please all people at all time.  A work which pleases a critic may not please the readers.  According to him, literary excellence does not depend on a particular diction or a particular mode of writing.  But it depends on the healthy pleasure given to the readers.  This pleasure inturn depends on the use of common language and the writer’s individual mode of writing. 

     According to Wordsworth, Neo-classicism doesn’t give any importance to originality of genius and always moves on the beatentrack.  So, it is a hindrance to originality.  Wordsworth’s critical writings mark the end of the old school and the beginning of the new one or it is the revival of the romantic school of the Elizabethan age.