Wordsworth and Coleridge

The video introduces William Wordsworth's preface to 'Lyrical Ballads' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria,' focusing on their philosophical explorations of poetry in early Romanticism and the ongoing tension between realism and fantasy in literature.

The Enlightenment discouraged fantasy in literature, emphasizing reason, common sense, and empirical truth. However, the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw a Romantic embrace of imagination and emotion, challenging the sole primacy of reason. While fantasy was still viewed with suspicion due to its overt falsity, Romantic writers sought to reintroduce its value for conveying imaginative and emotional truths, often through allegory or morals.

Wordsworth's preface, published in 1798 as part of 'Lyrical Ballads,' marked a significant shift towards the Romantic movement. 'Lyrical Ballads' itself was an experimental collection focusing on marginal figures and blending private lyric with public ballad styles. Wordsworth wrote the preface to clarify his and Coleridge's poetic principles, advocating for poetry written in the language of common speech, focusing on everyday life, but colored with imagination to transform the ordinary and provide wonder.

Wordsworth emphasized the poet's use of imagination within contemplation to describe the everyday world in a new way. He believed a poet could conjure feelings and identify with situations even without direct experience, entering a 'delusion' to recreate appropriate emotions. Despite this imaginative method, Wordsworth still framed the poet's goal in scientific terms: to seek and present universal truth, emphasizing that literature should lead to a recognition of truth accessible to all.

Coleridge, disagreeing with Wordsworth's articulation of their goals, presented his own philosophy in 'Biographia Literaria.' He identified two cardinal points for poetry: truth and imagination, but prioritized imagination more explicitly. Coleridge argued that poetry should excite sympathy, adhere to the truth of nature, and give interest through novelty, modifying reality with imagination for the reader. For Coleridge, the primary goal of poetry was pleasure, not simply truth.

Coleridge explained that 'Lyrical Ballads' intentionally contained two types of poems: his own supernatural poems (using fantasy for dramatic truth) and Wordsworth's ordinary life poems (focused on everyday characters and incidents for truth through recognition). Wordsworth prioritized truth—general and operative, demonstrable through common human experience. Coleridge prioritized pleasure, arguing poetry is opposed to science as its immediate object is pleasure, not truth. While both acknowledged elements of truth and pleasure, their emphasis differed: Wordsworth saw pleasure emerging from demonstrated truths, while Coleridge saw truth as secondary to the enjoyment and imaginative experience of the poetic form.

The lecture concludes by examining how realism and fantasy persuade. Realism persuades the mind through rationality, appealing to the material world and universal experiences, leading to pleasure from recognition of truth. Fantasy persuades through pleasure, moving emotions and spirit by appealing to novelty, marvel, and the unexpected, leading to pleasure through surprise. Both modes utilize imagination and emotion, but they aim for truth in distinct ways, highlighting the enduring tension between these literary approaches.