Assignment Paper no. 3 : Coleridge's Views on Poem, Prose and Poetry

Assignment



Name : Pina Gondaliya
Sem : 1
Roll No : 25
Enrollment No : 2069108420200012
Paper No : 3 Literary Criticism and Theory
Submitted To : Department of English
MKB university

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge :

Samuel Coleridge was Pre-Victorian Author. He was born in Devonshire. He was youngest of 14 children. His father was the parish vicar, died in1781 just before Coleridge’s ninth birthday. He was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologigian. He became close friend to William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who moved to Alfoxden in 1797 to be near the Coleriges at Nether Stowey, and the two poets planned Lyrical Ballads, which appeared in 1798. Coleridge best known poems are “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Kubla Khan”, the latter of which was reportedly written under the influence of opium.

• What is Poetry ?

Poetry is a form of literature based on words and rhythm. It often employs rhyme and meter. In poetry, words are strung together to form sounds, image, and ideas that might be too complex or abstract to describe directly. Poetry wriiten acy do not cording to srict rules of rhyme and rules and each culture had its own rules. Ancient poet follows this rules but todays,modern poets frequentl do away with with rules altogether their poems generallryyme, and do not fit any particular meter. Poetry is probably the oldest of literature, and probably predates the origin of writin itself. Poetry can be written with all the same purooses as other form of literature like a beauty, humor, storytelling, political messges etc.......

• Coleridge views on poetry :

Coleridge says that the poetry is a wider than poem, it brings the whole soul of the man. Poetry of the highest kind may exist without meter and even without the contra-distinguishing object of a poem. Poetry is a art of creating a poem activity of poets mind.

Poetry, according to Coleridge, is the product of imagination working on the objects of life and nature. It is an activity of imagination, idealizing the real and realising the ideal. As colours are to the art of painting, words are to the art of writing poetry. Again, as the combination of colors decide the pattern and quality of painting, so the arrangement of words aesthetically expressing the emotions and thoughts of the power decide the pattern an quality of poetry. But words arranged in the pattern of rhyme alone would not make poetry. The following lines, for example, have rhyming ending, but they do not make poetry:

"Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November."

The real soul of poetry lies in its power of expressing and arousing emotions. However, rhyme and rhythm add to the charm and pleasure of poetry. He says, "As a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm super-added, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems. But mere meter and rhyme, without imagination and emotion for their bases would not make poetry. But it should be remembered that pleasure, and not truth is the immediate end of poetry. He does not believe that moral preaching is the ultimate end of poetry. It is true that metrical form of composition has more charm and pleasure. But they are merely apparel, and not the soul of poetry.
Coleridge points out that ,

“Poetry of highest kind may exists without meter and even without the contradistinction object of a poem”. He gives example of the writings of Plato,Taylor and bible.

Poetry for Coleridge is an activity of poet is mind importance of secondary imagination.
David Daiches points out, ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is a wider category than a “poem”; that is, poetry is
a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosopher or scientist and is not confident to those who employ metrical language , or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this larger sense, brings, ‘The whole soul of man; into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its ‘relative worth and dignity’.

• What is Poem :

Poem is one of the form of literature. A poem is collection of spoken or written words that expresses ideas or emotions in a powerfully vivid and imaginative style. A poem compose on sone particular rhythmic and metrical pattern. Writers or poets expreess their emotions through their poem. The form of poem divided in to various kind. Like a free verse, Epic, Ballad, Sonnet and Elegy.

• Colridge viwes on poem :

Poem is form of poetry. Poem is a writing which has melody, meter and rhyme, while poetry without any meter and rhyme, can directly be connected with heart of poet or reader.
Defination of poem according to Colridge,

“A Poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth”.

Poem is a nature function as Colridge explaining his idea and view towards by rhyme and that took place as golden shield. A poem, therfore, may be defined as, that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

Thus, according to Coleridge, the poem is distinguished form prose compositions by its immediate object. The immediate object of prose is to give truth and that of poem is to please. He again distinguishes those prose compositions (romance and novels) from poem whose object is similar to poem i.e. to please. He calls this poem a legitimate poem and defines it as, “it 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”. Therefore, the legitimate poem is a composition in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work. While reading this sort of poem “the reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity or by a res. The poem contains the same elements as a prose composition. But the difference is between the combination of those elements and objects aimed at in both the composition.

“In Imaginative power and Narrative Skills, Coleridge surpassed Wordsworth”
According to the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination.If the object of the poet may simply be to facilitate the memory to recollect (remember) certain facts, he would make use of certain artificial arrangement of words with the help of metre. As a result composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished from composition in prose by metre, or by rhyme.

Rhyme:


Most traditional poems use rhyme as a basic device for holding the poem together. Rhyme is the agreement in sound between words or syllables. The best way to think of rhyme is not as a series of lock stepping sound effects but as a system of echoes. Poets use rhyme to recall earlier words, to emphasize certain points, and to make their language memorable. In fact, rhymes can be extremely effective in making language take hold in a reader’s mind tless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself”. Here Coleridge asserts the importance of the impression created by the harmonious whole of the poem. To him, not one or other part but the entire effect, the journey of reading poem should be pleasurable. Thus Coleridge puts an end to the age old controversy whether the end of poem is instruction or delight. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poem has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the wholel.

• Poem and Prose :

Poem is something which written by the use of meter, rhyme, diction etc, and prose is something which written unrhyme. Meter and rhyme etc are use in prose.
The immediate object of poem is ‘Pleasure’, not truth but sometimes poem may be gave truth as ultimate object.
The proe work like scientific and historical composition, the immediate purpose of prose is the communication of “Truth”. Other prose works like novels, to give pleasure is immediate aim and the ultimate end may be to give truth.
Coleridge’s views of poem and prose and he says that ;
“I wish our cleaver young poets would remember my homely definition of prose and poem; that is ,
“prose- words in their best order;
poem- the best words in the best order.”

Reference :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1phy7XakQq661GgSbK_9bsi-PDn3r-aW3DFXZTxWpVJE/mobilebasic