Poets and Poetry

Tracing different concepts and definitions up to

Wordsworth

What is Poetry?Who are Poets?

Classical theories

• Plato: Banishes poets. Calls

it a copy of a copy. Morally corrupts the readers and presents Gods in immoral fashion. Believes that poetry’s purpose is to instruct and not entertain.

“dangerous for this reason because they aroused the appetitive part instead of the rational.”

• Aristotle : Moral purpose.

Purified emotions with fictional examples.

Poetry elevated compared to history, purified morals and provides pleasure. “The poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen.”

Other Famous Poets• Sidney– best among other disciplines, not poetry but some poets are

to blame, maker and enchanter.

• Shelly—awakens and enlarges mind, legislators of the world. “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

• Samuel Johnson—”Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

• Byron— “(Poetry) is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.”

All agree that a poet searches truth, elevated art form, end result pleasure with purpose of morality.

Wordsworth’s definition of Poet

• man speaking to men. • more lively sensibility. • greater imagination. (“affected by absent things as if

they were present” )

• greater knowledge of the human soul.• Greater knowledge of human nature. • more comprehensive soul. • greater zest for life.• greater power of expression and

communication.

Wordsworth’s definition of Poetry

• “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

• “Poetry sheds no tears, such as angels weep, but natural and human tears.”

Poetic Process

• To achieve spontaneous over flow of emotions!

i. Observationii. Recollectioniii.Contemplatio

niv.Imaginative

element of emotions experienced earlier

Poet meditates, connecting

thoughts and feelings

Network of past thoughts and feelings

activated.

Poetic moments

occur (spontaneous over flow of emotions)

Poem gets written

Reader is i)enlightened, ii) affections

strengthened iii)purified ,iv) gets

understanding.

Plato vs. Wordsworth

• Platoi. Mere copy.ii. Twice removed

from ideal.iii. Leads away from

truth.iv. Immediate.v. Worthless.vi. Corrupts.

• Wordsworthi. Imitative and

creative.ii. Primary law of

nature.iii. Brings closer.iv. Meditation.v. Moral purpose.vi. Saves.

Influence of Aristotlemimesis, impact, accessibility in terms of the language, concreteness and catharsis are the elements evident in Wordsworth’s poems which were professed by Aristotle.

Aristotle

i. mimesis is the act of creating.

ii. past experiences.iii. significant impact.iv. Relatable artistic

representation.v. Simple language.vi. Catharsis.

Wordsworth

i. reflecting upon his memories to create.

ii. Re-called his experience.iii. Emotions and feeling

highlighted.iv. incidents and situations

from common life.v. Rustic and real language.vi. Pleasure as end product.

We stood together; and that I, so longA worshipper of Nature, hither cameUnwearied in that service: rather say

With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,That after many wanderings, many yearsOf absence, these steep woods and lofty

cliffs,And this green pastoral landscape, were

to me

Conclusion

• If I may dare say so Wordsworth went back to the very origins of starting a new form of art that he re-defined and re-established with some further explanations and alterations to his concepts from Coleridge. He gave his concepts a vent that one, like myself would say that he gave the terms new meaning as he though should have been given or conceived when this art form originated centuries ago.