Romantic Criticism

In this unit, we shall examine some of the salient features of British Romantic Criticism,
particularly in relation to the works of William Wordsworth. Even before we come to
Wordsworth, it is important to note a few things about the Romantic Movement in general. A
movement in literary criticism can never be fully separated from the socio-political and economic
context in which it happened. This is particularly true in the case of Romanticism in relation to
the political factors that contributed to it. One of the most productive ways of understanding the
Romantic Movement is by tracing its connection to the French Revolution. It’s not an
exaggeration to say that the Romantic Movement would not have been imaginable without the
ideas generated during the French Revolution that challenged several time honored assumptions
underlying Western social and political theories. For our purpose, we will limit the scope to a
single idea i.e. the Western notion of Man.
As many contemporary thinkers suggest, the Western notion of the human person was
developed during the Renaissance era. Literature in the pre-Renaissance age was primarily
concerned with questions of the Divine. With the emergence of Renaissance ideas, the Divine
was gradually replaced by the Human subject. But in the Renaissance literature, the place
vacated by the Divine beings are taken over Kings, Queens and heroic people. Thus, for example,
in almost all major plays of Shakespeare, the characters are either Kings, Generals, or
extraordinary human beings. This trend continued for the next two centuries.
The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period of far-reaching social and political upheavals in
France. Often believed to be the mother of all revolutions, the French Revolution challenged
several socio-political convictions of the Western world. One such political ideology that helped
control political organization throughout the Western world was what we call the Divine Right
theory of Kingship. According to this theory, a King was chosen by God to rule over his people
and hence he was accountable to God only, and not to the people he ruled. The King was chosen
by God and hence he was believed to be his representative and that gave him absolute right over
the territory and the people over whom he ruled. Understood in a certain way, it implied that
the people had no right whatsoever to suspect the intention of a King and his actions were to be
taken as Divine actions. It meant that talking against a ruler was not only treason in the political
sense of the term, but it a ‘sin’ in the most fundamental religious sense. It was this kind of an
ideology that compelled people to remain uncritical of what their rulers did. The French
Revolution was the first political movement to challenge this ideology.
The French Revolution proved that the rights of a King can not only be challenged, but he can
also be dethroned and killed. The murder of the French King by the common citizens of France
finally proved that the King did not enjoy any divine protection and that he is as vulnerable as
any other human being. The hero of the French Revolution was the man on the street, and hence
it was proved that he is at the center of any political organization. This idea got into literature
and literary criticism in many different ways. The notions of individuality, freedom, imagination,
and free-will etc. which dominate the Romantic worldview had their origin in the ideas generated
during the French Revolution. Romanticism was a major break with the literary traditions of the
existing period. In English, the first major work signaling the arrival of Romanticism was a
collection of poems published by William Wordsworth in 1798 titled Lyrical Ballads.
In his well-known preface to Lyrical Ballads, which is believed to be a manifesto of the Romantic
Movement, Wordsworth justifies the kind of poetry he has included in this collection. Such an
introduction was necessitated by the fact that the kind of poems included in this volume were
radically different from the poetry of that period. It is interesting to note that in the history of
English Literature, there were two such poets who had to explain the kind of poetry they were
writing basically by way of self-justification. One, as we noted, is William Wordsworth who had
to justify his poetic practice because it was so radically different that a common reader would
even suspect if it is poetry at all. The other case in point is TS Eliot, who had to write several
essays by way of justifying the kind of poetry that he wrote, primarily because his type of poetry
too was non-existent at that time.

Definition of Poetry
In the preface, Wordsworth explains his own poetic or creative method and the creative process
itself. He makes it very clear that the poetry included in this collection would suit the interest of
mankind permanently. He believed that the neo-classical trends that prevailed in poetry during
his time had grown so artificial and infecund that it was the responsibility of a poet to lend it a
new lease of life and a new kind of sensibility. Wordsworth presents a new definition of poetry,
poet, and function of poetry.
He calls the poet “a man speaking to men”. What is implied in this definition is that a poet is a
person like any other person, a man among men, and his audience is the common people who
read him. In this perspective, neither the poet nor the readers have any extra social or intellectual
privilege. With this kind of an idea, art becomes, finally, democratic – made by the people, and
for the people. The only difference perhaps between a poet and the readers is that the poet
endowed with a greater power of imagination. His well-known definition of poetry as “the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which takes its origin from emotions recollected in
tranquility” sums up many of his radical ideas about the nature of poetry. What this definition
suggests is that poetry is a product of human imagination and the only requirement the poet
needs to have is the power of imagination.
What it undermines is the neo-classical notion that a poet has to be a highly educated and
cultured individual. If the neo-classical poetry was primarily concerned with the faculty of
intellect, romantic poetry is deliberately ‘unintellectual’ and it becomes an effortless expression
of human imagination. The word spontaneous suggests that the poetic activity is not a deliberate,
well-made exercise of human intellect but a passive expression of strong passions. This becomes
particularly important when we note that in the neo-classical age, poetry was meant for the
aristocratic, urban educated classes. Neo-classical poets like John Dryden and Alexander Pope
thought of poetry as a serious intellectual work meant exclusively for the urban elites who
indulged in the luxury of linguistic voluptuousness. Many of those poems were given to describing
the moral decadence of the urban upper-middle classes and their intriguing social life in their
own language.
In Wordsworth’s view, the raw material for poetry is “feeling”, which is recollected by the poet
in his moments of tranquility. A poet might encounter an event that provokes his feelings in his
everyday life and later in his tranquil moments, he passively recollects them and there flows
poetry in a natural and uncontrolled way. Perhaps an example from rural agrarian life could help
illustrate this point. A poet’s heart could be compared to a village well. In the rainy season the
well gets overfilled and the water flows out naturally, unobstructed by any force. The poet’s heart
is filled with emotions for which the poet is not responsible, and the poetic moment is that
moment when these emotions outflow without the poet’s own willful efforts.
What is highlighted in this kind of an explanation of the poetic process is the involuntary nature
of the creative act. Poetry comes when it comes in the most effortless way and the poet can
neither enrich it nor control it.

Subject Matter of Poetry

What should be the ideal subject matter of art in general, or poetry in particular, is a much
debated question in literary criticism dating back to Aristotle himself. Wordsworth proposes a
simple answer to this question – the life of humble, rustic people is the most appropriate subject
matter of poetry. Wordsworth gives several reasons for this rather contentious claim. He claims
that the essential passions of the human heart find free, frank, and unrestrained expression in
humble, rustic surroundings. The basic human feelings exist in the simplicity and purity
surrounding the unsophisticated life of the rustic people. The rustics live an unpretentious life
and they openly express their passions. The rustic human passions are deeply related to the real
forms of nature and hence their emotions are noble and permanent.
Wordsworth, obviously is influenced by the ideas of the French revolutionary intellectuals here.
The notion of ‘noble savage’ is the source of inspiration for Wordsworth to state that the man in
the wild of nature is more true that his sophisticated urban counterpart. In this kind of an
assumption, Wordsworth not only presents a nature/culture binary but more interestingly,
suggests that the natural is superior to the cultural. In a sense, the entire Romantic idealization
of nature has its starting point in Wordsworth’s definition of the ideal subject matter of poetry.
Wordsworth seems to share the belief that evil has its roots in man’s distancing himself away
from nature and his suggested solution is a return to nature, the Mother Earth.
His glorification of the rustics is the result of his conviction that the rustics live close to nature
and hence there is greater authenticity and truth in their mode of existence.
Language of Poetry
Another major contentious argument that Wordsworth presents relates to his notion of the
language of poetry. He emphatically states that the language of poetry must be “a selection of
language really used by man”. In fact, there is a very close relation between his notion of the
subject matter of poetry and the language of poetry. Since he believes that the subject matter of
poetry is connected to the nature and rustic life, the language of poetry ought to be the same
that they use. In other words, good poetry should be written in the language used by rustic
people. His claim is that such a language is divested of all the artificiality, pretense, and vanity of
urban life. He believed that rendering rustic language into poetry had several benefits.
The simplicity of rustic speech is emotional, passionate, and deep-seated. In highly emotional
moments, such as love, separation, marriage, death etc. the rustic expressions are unrestrained
and natural. The emotions of the rustics come naturally from their hearts without any artificial
mediation. Their simple words are profoundly true and philosophical. Wordsworth found that
the words that are used in common, everyday life by rustic people should be the most suitable
language for poetic expression.

Wordsworth not only inaugurated the Romantic Movement in English Literature, but he also
spelt out the salient features of this movement in his criticism. Wordsworth explained in his
literary criticism what he practiced in his own poetic career and his poetry illustrates all his
theoretical conceptions about poetry. The influence of Wordsworth was far-reaching and the
literature of the entire 19th century was under the sway of the ideas proposed by Wordsworth.
These ideas dominated the entire 19th century conceptions of art and they still continue to
influence a large number of writers and critics.