A Summary Of Coleridge's Preface To Lyrical Ballads

4. Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Suggestion of New Rules through their “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” and “Biographia Literaria”:

The end of the Neo-Classical age brought in the era of Romanticism during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this era the need of concrete rules was rejected and the spontaneity of emotions was acknowledged. That is why poetry became the defining genre and Preface to the Lyrical Ballads became the manifesto of this era. The introduction of this era perhaps can be traced to the publication of Preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800 by William Wordsworth. In this essay he mentioned the elements of poetry first of which is the subject matter which is the “situations from common life” (240) and that the purpose

Eliot discarded the romantic notion of writing, where he said that personal emotion should not be used in poetry. He believed that poetry should be impersonal, which has a clear distinct from the poet’s life. He introduced the idea of depersonalization. He also gave the definition of poetry, where he said, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from personality” (470). He showed the process of depersonalization as the process of writing poetry. He compares the mind of the poet to a “catalyst” (Eliot 466) and the process of poetic creation to the process of a chemical reaction. Two gases oxygen and sulphur dioxide are combine to form sulphurous acid when a filament of platinum is introduced. Catalyst is present in chemical reaction but does not take part in the reaction; it “remained inert neutral, and unchanged” (466). Platinum is a catalyst, which is needed in a reaction. Poet’s mind is like catalyst; he combines different emotions together and creates something new but does not involve his personal emotion in the poetry. He said, “The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum” (466). The mind of the poet is continuously forming emotions and experiences into new wholes, but the new combination does not include even a trace of the poet’s mind, just as the newly formed sulphurous acid does not contain any trace of platinum. The poet must continually surrender himself to something which is more valuable than himself. Eliot believed that “The emotion of art is impersonal” (470). Therefore, his claimed that poetry should write in escaping personal emotion but not emotion. Eliot did not reject the idea of emotion but refused the idea of personal emotion to involve in poetry, which has a clear diverse from Wordsworth’s ideology. Probably all these thoughts can be consider as the doctrine of