AMITY INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES & RESEARCH

An Introduction to
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

BA English
Semester 3
Study In Literary Criticism
Dr. Deepali Sharma
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An Introduction
 The intellectual and imaginative climate of the Romantic period was heavily influenced by the
political, social and economic developments taking place. The American Revolution, the French
Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the changing religious ethos, all contributed to the
changing temper of the times.

 The overcrowded industrial towns lacked civic amenities and offered decreased wages with the
labor supply far exceeding the demand. It is no surprise that in the face of such gross squalor, want
and greed the poets took recourse in Nature and imagination.

 The religious rift between the Puritans and the Catholics amplified the feeling of discontentment.
The main characteristic of this dissent being the insistence on intellectual and spiritual
independence, the right of private judgment in the context of moral issues, the importance on the
inner light for the reading of the Scripture, granting the relationship of the devout and the devotee
without any intermediary.
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 It was in keeping with the demands of the changing times that Blake took recourse in his unique
mythology, and Wordsworth saw in Nature a divine glory that provided the necessary element
of harmony between the external world of reality and the inner world of the poet.

 Due to their involvement with the landscape as a living, Romantic poetry has become
synonymous with “nature poetry.” Wordsworth aimed to renew our sense of wonder in the
everyday.

 Coleridge, by contrast, achieved wonder by impressing upon his readers a sense of occult powers
and unknown modes of being. The pervasiveness of nature poetry in the period can also be
linked to the idealization of the natural scene as a site where the individual could find freedom
from social laws. Conforming to the view that poetry acted as a mode of venting the poet’s
feelings, the lyric became a major Romantic form.
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 Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and later Shelley all assumed the persona of the poet-prophet. The
reputation of Coleridge as a critic is very high. He is regarded by many scholars to be the best English
critic, and one of the best critics in Europe.

 The testimony of many writers can be given to prove this point. Saintsbury eliminates one after
another of possible contenders for the title of the greatest critic and concludes: “ So then, there
abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge.”

 George Watson says, “The achievement of Coleridge is rightly held to be supreme among the English
critics, but no one seeking to expound it can face his task with much confidence.” He lays stress on
the discursive nature of his critical writings. Watson says that the Biographia Literaria is so discursive
in its argument as almost to merit its sub-title “Biographical Sketches.”
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Biographia Literaria
• Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an
autobiography in discourse by S.T. Coleridge which he published in 1820. The work is long and
seemingly loose structured. Although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a
straightforward or linear autobiography. Instead, it is deeply thoughtful, with numerous essays on
philosophy.

• It was begun by its author as a literary autobiography but ended up in discussions about Kant, and
Schelling and Coleridge's perceptive criticism of Wordsworth's poetry and a comprehensive
statement on creative imagination which constitutes his most signal contribution to literary
criticism and theory.

• Coleridge's whole aesthetic - his definition of poetry, his idea of the poet, and h~s poetical
criticism - revolve around his theory of creative imagination.
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ColerColeridge’s Definition of a Poemidge’s

Definition of a Poem
• Coleridge tries to bring out a distinction between prose and poetry, and he also gives his own
definition of a poem. Coleridge’s attitude to metre is not clear and he is in two minds. His
language is hesitating and sometimes almost self-contradictory. A poem, according to him, uses
the same medium as a prose composition, namely words. So, the difference between the two
must lie in the different use of words in consequence of their different objects:

• A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition, the difference, therefore, must
consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed.
According to the difference of the object will be the difference of combination. It is possible that
the object may be merely to facilitate the recollection of any given facts or observation by
artificial arrangement, and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished
from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly.
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Coleridge’s Definition of a Poem

 According to Coleridge, poem is distinguished form and prose is composition by its

sudden object. Poem is just to please and when poem fulfills the criteria, it is known
as a Legitimate poem in Coleridge’s language. The Legitimate Poem is a small
composition in which metre and rhyme bear an organic relation to the total work.
Coleridge begins this concept with his views on two cardinal points of poetry. To him
these cardinal points are

1. The power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of
nature.

2. The power of giving the interest of novelty by modifying with the colours of imagination.
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A Legitimate Poem
 A ‘legitimate’ poem is one in which the parts mutually support and explain each other
and harmonize with the known influences of metrical arrangement. We cannot give
the praise of just poems, first, to a series of striking lines or, absorbing enough in
themselves, make a separate whole and do not harmonize with the rest of the
composition and secondly to an unsustained composition, from which the reader
collects rapidly the general result, unattracted by the component parts.

Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual
power or like the path of sound through the air; at every step he pauses and half
recedes and from the reprogressive movement collects the force which again carries
him onwards.
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Coleridge’s Definition of a Poem

 In first point about poetry, Coleridge tries to say that a poet writes a poem related to
nature in very simple form and style. Any person can read and enjoy the poem. So, poet is
devoted and loyal to the nature and has power to move reader’s heart and mind towards
nature in writing this type of poetry.

 William Wordsworth writes poetry dealing with the theme according to first basic point
and this type of poem is very near and realistic to the nature and ability to leads out the
people near the nature.

 In this type of poems subjects are very common and taken from and chosen from day-to-
day life and very ordinary life. The characters of this type of poems are very general and
ordinary and we can easily find out this type of characters in each village.
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In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days
in the several months’ Thirty days hath September, April, June and November, and others of the same class and
purpose, And as a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and qualities, all
compositions that have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems.

 Though the use of metre and rhyme in such poems facilitates our memory, there is nothing in the content
of the poem which necessitates their use in it. This is the basic difference in the objects of poetry and the
works of science. The immediate object of a work of science is truth and the immediate object of a
poem is pleasure. Both a work of science may also give pleasure to its readers and a poem contain a
profound truth. They may be called their ultimate objects. The ideal conditions would be where both fuse
together into one. But as the immediate object of poetry is pleasure, not truth, and metre under certain
conditions provides it, poetry prefers it to the language of prose. The metre should suit the language and
content of the poem and not be a superaddition only for the sake of ornament or memory.
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Coleridge’s Definition of a Poem

 Pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed, as it is in novels and
romances. Is then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme entitle, these to the
name of poems?

 The answer is that we cannot call them poems because in the first-place metrical form would
not be suitable to its language and content and secondly, due to its length all parts would not
require equal attention and therefore would not equally contribute to the total pleasure.
Coleridge defines:

A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its
immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common
with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible
with a distinct gratification from each component part.
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Coleridge’s Definition of a Poet

 Coleridge has given his own definition of a poet. A poet, described in ideal perfection, “brings the whole soul of man into
activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity.” He diffuses a
tone and spirit of unity, that blends and fuses each into each, by that synthetic and magical power which we call
imagination. This power, “reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities:
 of sameness with difference;
 of general with the concrete;
 the idea, with the image;
 the individual, with the representative;
 the sense of novelty and freshness,
 with old and familiar object;
 a more than usual state of emotion,
 with more than usual order, judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or
vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinate art to nature, the manner to
the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.”