Coleridge's views on Prose,Poem and Poetry.

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Assignment  Topic-
Coleridge ‘s views on prose,  poem and poetry

Name: Khasatiya  Reena K.
Roll No.: 36
Enrollment No. : 2069108420180032
Semester : M.A. 1
Year :2017-18
Email Id: khasatiyamili21@gmail.com
Submitted to. : Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Paper No.: 3 literary Theory and Criticism

Coleridge ‘s views on prose,  poem and poetry
•Introduction
The written monument of Coleridge’s critical work is contained in 24 chapters of Biographia literaria (1815–17). In this critical disquisition, Coleridge concerns himself not only with the practice of criticism, but also, with its theory. In his practical approach to criticism, we get the glimpse of Coleridge the poet; whereas in theoretical discussion, Coleridge the philosopher came to the center stage.

 In Chapter XIV of Biographia Literaria, Coleridge’s view on nature and function of poetry is discussed in philosophical terms. The poet within Coleridge discusses the difference between poetry and prose, and the immediate function of poetry, whereas the philosopher discusses the difference between poetry and poem.  He was the first English writer to insist that every work of art is, by its very nature, an organic whole. At the first step, he rules out the assumption, which, from Horace onwards, had wrought such havoc in criticism, that the object of poetry is to instruct; or, as a less extreme form of the heresy had asserted, to make men morally better.

•Definition of prose, poem and poetry in literature  

•Prose is so-called "ordinary writing" — made up of sentences and paragraphs, without any metrical (or rhyming) structure. If you write, "I walked about all alone over the hillsides," that's prose. If you say, "I wondered lonely as a cloud/that floats on high o'er vales and hills" that's poetry.

•prose - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

•poem. noun. A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, metaphor, and rhyme.

•Poem dictionary definition | poem defined – Your Dictionary

•Poetry (the term derives from a variant of the Greek term, poiesis, "making") is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

Poetry - Wikipedia

Coleridge ‘s views on prose, poem and poetry.

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. 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 meter. As a result composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished from composition in prose by metre, or by rhyme. In this, the lowest sense, one 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, &c.

Thus, to Coleridge, mere super addition of meter or rhyme does not make a poem.
He further elucidates his view point by various prose writings and its immediate purpose and ultimate end.

 In scientific and historical composition, the immediate purpose is to convey the truth (facts). In the prose works of other kinds (romances and novels), to give pleasure in the immediate purpose and the ultimate end may be to give truth. Thus, the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed.

 
Now the question is “Would then the mere super addition of meter, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems?” To this Coleridge replies that if meter is super added the other parts of the composition also must harmonies with it. In order to deserve the name poem each part of the composition, including meter, rhyme, diction and theme must harmonies with the wholeness of the composition.

 Meter should not be added to provide merely a superficial decorative charm. Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If meter is super added, all other, parts must be made constant with it. They all must harmonies with each other.

A poem, therefore, may be defined as, 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.
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 meter 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 restless 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 whole.

“A poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry

Coleridge points out that ...
“poetry of the highest kind may exist without meter and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem”. 

He gives example of the writings of Plato, Jeremy Taylor and Bible. The quality of the prose in this writings is equal to that of high poetry. He also asserts that the poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Then the question is what is poetry? How is it different from poem? To quote Coleridge: “What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with, what is a poem? 

The answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind. Thus the difference between poem and poetry is not given in clear terms. Even John Shawcross (in Biographia Literaria with Aesthetical Essays – 1907 Ed.) writes “this distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the imagination”. This is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the poet’s mind, and a poem is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination.

As David Daiches (A Critical History of English Literature) 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 philosophers or scientists and is not confined 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’. 

This takes place whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.
David Daiches further writes in A Critical History of English Literature, “The employment of the secondary imagination is a poetic activity, and we can see why Coleridge is let from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet’s activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination.”

 By virtue of his imagination, which is a synthetic and magical power, he harmonize and blends together various elements and thus diffuses a tone and spirit of unity over the whole. It manifests itself most clearly in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities – such as…..

•(a) of sameness, with difference,
•(b) of the general, with the concrete,
•(c) the idea, with the image,
•(d) the individual, with the representative,
•(e) the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects,
•(f) a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order,
•(g) judgment with enthusiasm.

And while this imagination blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, it subordinates to nature, the manner to the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.

•Conclusion

To conclude, metre is essential to a poem to make it different from a prose piece, to heighten the effect, to enliven pleasure and to help us in memorizing a poem; metre also balances the spontaneous overflow of passion in the poet’s mind; metrical language better conveys excitement than prose. Since passion is the property of poetry, metre is organic to poetry. Then anything related to metre is actually related to the spirit of poetry. 

The metrical pattern tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of the general feelings and of the attention. The effect which it produces is that of the continued excitement of surprise, metre also gives us the sense of musical delight.

•Reference
https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/i-write-in-metre-because-i-am-about-to-use-a-language-different-from-that-of-prose-coleridge-examine-critically-coleridges-view-of-metrical-composition/amp/#ampshare=https://neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/i-write-in-metre-because-i-am-about-to-use-a-language-different-from-that-of-prose-coleridge-examine-critically-coleridges-view-of-metrical-composition/
•Study material