2. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an
English poet, literary critic and
philosopher.
• He was the leader of Romantic
poetry.
• He used opium for inspiration.
3. During the 18th century the
catchphrase of literature and art was
reason.
But, the 19th century was heralded
by major shift in the conception and
emphasis of literary art and
specifically poetry.
4. Subject Matter
The most important characteristic of his literary
text, he used supernatural elements, visionary
elements in his poems.
Supernatural elements, extraordinary and
mysterious that can be found in human nature.
Nature is not the only subject matter, he also talk
about psychology of character.
5. Language
Sophisticated, elaborated and ornamented.
The best part of human language is derived from
reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed
by a voluntary appropriate on of fixed symbols to
internal acts, to processes and results of
imagination, the greater part of which no place in
the consciousness of un-aducated man.
The language of poetry undoubtly comes from
imagination. The way, Poet perceives the world
and translates it for everyone.
6. Purpose of Poetry
The purpose of poetry is to give pleasure
and this pleasure is from whole part and
from each companent part.
If you read a novel, you take pleasure from
the whole part.
If you read a poem, you take pleasure from
the each part.
7. Poetry
Coleridge sees the poetry as a source of
knowledge
The Poem must be cohesive unit with every
part working together to build into a whole.
Philosophy was so important, because it
was the sum of all knowledge.
8. Poet
„No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the
sometimes being a profound philosopher.‟
He valued scientific thinking as a branch of
philosophy. According to him; if a person is a poet,
he should also be a philosopher otherwise he is
not poet.
The poet must be educated person who possess
poetic genious.
9. Coleridge vs. Wordsworth
Coleridge‟s objection to wordsworth‟s use of term „real language
of men.‟
According to wordsworth; „Language really used by common
man‟ and „The concern of poetry should be simple, rustic and
common life.‟ But, for Coleridge; such a generalization cannot
exist, for men are individuals by nature.
He thought that lowering diction and content simply made it. So
that The poet had a smaller vocabularly of both words and
concepts to draw from.
Coleridge also combines his theoretical ideas in his poetry. He
abondans Wordsworth‟s notion of poetry for the common man
and uses lofty language, poetic diction and subject matter, while
he still holds a reverence for Nature in herent to romantic
literature, his poems are not exclusively based around the
natural.
10. • Subject Matter Wordsworth Coleridge
• Childhood manners. • Supernatural, extraordiinary
• Rustic, humble and common life . and mysterious elements that
• Beautiful forms of nature. can be found in human nature.
• Nature is not only subject
( Anti-neoclassical )
matter, he also talks about
psychology of character (
NEW )
• Language • Language really used common man. • Metrical arrangement
• He used language and subjects of the • Sophisticated
common man to convey his ideas. • Ornamented
• He was against to Augustan Age
• Elevated
decorum and over-flow style.
( Anti-neoclassical) ( Neo-classical )
• Purpose of • Duty of poetry is to spread • It is to give pleasure and
poetry humanitanal values and attitudes. this pleasure is from whole
parts and from each part
( NEW )
• Defination of • Poetry is the spontaneous • A poem is a composition
poetry overflow of powerful feelings which is opposed to works
recollected in tranquillity. of science by its object.
11.
12. Biographia Literaria is the one of the
his significant theoretical works.
Biographia Literaria is concerned with
the form of poetry, the genius of the
poet and relationship to philosophy.
13. CHAPTER 13
IMAGINATION
Coleridge focused mainly an imagination as the key to
poetry. He divided into two main components; primary and
secondary imagination.
His most contribution to Literary Theory, literature and
criticism is his „POETIC IMAGINATION‟
For Coleridge imagination was responsible for acts that were
truly creative and inventive.
The imagination, on the other hand, was vital and
transformative.
Imagination described the „mysterious power‟ which
extracted from such data, hidden ideas and meaning.
15. PRIMARY IMAGINATION
It acts dependently of human will.
It represents the basic agency of human awareness.
Primaty imagination is something that is there in every human
being because it is the living power of human perception.
It is the common faculty of every human being.
It enable us to seperate, divide and order in order to make
perception possible.
And to understand the unity of object.
The primary imagination is a spontaneous creation of new ideas
and they are expressed perfectly.
Primary imagination was for Coleridge, „the necessary
imagination‟ as it outomatically balances and fuses the innate
capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of
the objective world that the one receives through the senses.
Primary imagination is the consciousness shared by all men
while the secondary imagination is limited to poets.
16. SECONDARY IMAGINATION
It acts in dependently of human will.
It represents the conscious use of human power.
The creative gift possessed by the poet.
Secondary imagination is rather symbolic, It produces a form its
own.
It helps understanding the unity of universal, like good, divinity,
truth, moral.
It represents a superior occulty which could only be associated
with artistic genius.
It is more active and conscious in its working.
Secondary imagination selects and orders the raw material and
reshapes and remodels it into objects of beauty.
It is mitigated by the conscious act of imagination therefore; it is
hindered by not only imperfect creation, but also by imperfect
expression.
17. FANCY
Coleridge distinguishes secondary imagination, with, fancy.
Coleridge introduces his concept of fancy. Fancy is the lowes
form of imagination because it has no other counters to play
with but fixities and definites.
Fancy; mechanical, imitative.
It constructs images out of new combination conceptions and
memories.
Fancy in Coleridge‟s eyes was employed for tasks that were
„passive‟ and „mechanical‟, the accumulation of the fact and
documentation of what is seen.
For Coleridge, fancy is the attribute of poetic genius, but
imagination is its soul. Fancy is equated with a mechanical
mixture and imagination is equated with a chemical compound.
Fancy is a limited or false parallel of Secondary Imagination.
The parallel between the creativity of the poet and that of the
cosmos makes us think of Schelling, but in Coleridge‟s account
there is on consciousness on deliberation of the cosmic
creativity, so that the word „God‟ is perhaps more appropriate
here.
18. CHAPTER 13
ON IMAGINATION
„The imagination then I consider either as primary or
secondary.The primary imagination I hold to be living power
and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition
in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I
am The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-
existing with the conscious will, yet still as indentical with the
primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree,
and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates in order to re-create; or where this process is
rendered impossible, yet still at all events it stuggles to
idealize and to unity. It is essentially vital even as all objects
are essentially fixed and dead‟
19. „Samuel Taylor Coleridge divides imagination into two parts;
the primary and secondary imagination. As the „Living Power
and Prime Agent‟ the primary imagination is attributed a
divine quality, namely the creation of the self the „I am‟
However, because it is not subject to human will, the poet
has no control over the primary imagination. It is the intrinsic
quality of the poet that makes him or her a creator, harking
back Wordsworth. The secondary imagination does not have
the unlimited power to create, it struggles to attain the ideal
but can never reach it. Still the primary governs the
secondary, and imagination gives rise to our ideas of
perfection.‟
20. „Fancy, on the contrary has no other counters to play with but
fixities and definites. The fancy indeed no other than a made
of memory emancipated from the order of time and space;
while it is blended with, and modified by that emprical
phenomenon of the will, which we express by word choise,
But equally with the ordinary memory the fancy must receive
all its materials ready made from the law of association.‟
21. Coleridge also adds Fancy is his description of the
Imagination. According to his Philosophy, Fancy is
even lower than the secondary imagination, which
is already of the earthly realm. Fancy is the source
of our baser desires. It is not a creative faculty but
a repository for lust.
22. Coleridge writes that poetic imagination „dissolves,
diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; it
struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially
vital, even as all objects are essentially fixed an
dead‟
The idea here is that everything is the world is
„dead‟ and only the poet‟s imagination can bring
aspects of the world alive, which is the meaning of
the word which Coleridge uses „vital.‟
23. Imagination he conceives of according to the
Kantian distinction between the Verstand (familiar
perception and concepts) and Vernunft (direct
apprehension of universal truth ).
Corresponding to the Verstand is the Primary
Imagination, and to the Vernunft is the Secondary
Imagination.
The Verstand faculty is possessed by every human
being.
The Vernunft faculty is a superior intuitive power
conceives of the oneness of universals.
24. CHAPTER 14
In chapter 14 Coleridge outlines his poetic creed. All the
major issues to be discussed are raised here.
In relating the origins of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge in this
chapter employs the MIMETIC APPROACH since he
delineates the two distinct subject matters and incidents
which he and Wordsworth were to imitate.
Coleridge says that the power of poetry to be twofold: That
is, it can arouse reader sympathy by “faithful adherence to
the truth of nature” and by “giving the interest of novelty by
the modifying colors of imagination”
Wordsworth was to assume the first task by rendering the
familiar as marvelous and beautiful, while Coleridge was to
accept the second task of making the unfamiliar credible.
25. Coleridge‟s poems “should be directed to persons and
characters supernatural or at least romantic” but would be
presented with such “a semblance of truth sufficient to
procure for these shadows of imagination that willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes
poetic faith”
Wordsworth would take an opposing approach; his “subjects
were to be chosen from ordinary life,” but he would “give
them “the charm of novelty” so that they would “excite a
feeling analogous to the supernatural”
26. . In this most memorable of all critical phrases—“to produce .
. . the willing suspension of disbelief [in the reader] for the
moment which constitutes poetic faith”—Coleridge moves
into the AFFECTIVE domain. In essence, he contends that a
reader picks up every literary work knowing it is fiction (that
is, disbelieving that it is reality), but the reader willingly
suspends this disbelief while reading in order to gain the
pleasure which the literary work promises. This suspension
of disbelief is the “poetic faith” which every reader must
accord an author, until the author through the work violates
this faith.
27. Coleridge then gives his definition of a poem:
This definition first uses the AFFECTIVE THEORY: A poem
seeks to produce “immediate” “pleasure” in the reader, not to
teach a “truth”. This assertion runs counter to all of the critics
we have read since Horace, including Wordsworth.
The second part of the definition uses the OBJECTIVE
THEORY: A poem has “organic unity,” a conception, the
editors states, which “harken[s] back to Aristotle”. Organic
unity means that all of the parts of a poem must fit together
as the parts of an organism fit together, where, if you remove
one part, the organism dies.
28. “A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to
works of science by proposing for its immediate object
pleasure, not truth” [AFFECTIVE].
Such a “legitimate poem . . . must be one, the parts of which
mutually support and explain each other; all in their
proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and
known influences of metrical arrangement” [OBJECTIVE].
29. To Coleridge, the essence of poetry is not found in the Objective
or Affective approaches. Rather it is found in what goes on in
the mind of the poet—the EXPRESSIVE approach.
Thus, Coleridge states, “What is poetry? is so nearly the same
question with, what is a poet? that the answer to the one is
involved in the solution to the other”.
To Coleridge the true poet is characterized by “poetic genius”,
what he later calls “poetic IMAGINATION”. Coleridge then
describes what goes on in the poet‟s mind when a poem is
being created.
Imagination, he says, “sustains and modifies the images,
thoughts, and emotions of the poet‟s own mind”.
The “poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of
man into activity. . . . He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that
blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic
and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated
the name of imagination” .
30. “Imagination . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation
of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with
difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with
the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense
of novelty and of freshness, with old and familiar objects . . .
and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the
artificial, still subordinates art to nature . . .”.
Imagination is “the SOUL that is everywhere, and in each;
and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole”