.Differences between 18th-Century and 19th-Century Literary Criticism:
1. Focus:
18th Century: Emphasis on reason, logic, and objectivity. Critics like Dryden, Pope, and Johnson championed Neoclassical ideals of order, clarity, and adherence to established rules.
19th Century: Emphasis on individuality, emotion, and subjectivity. Romantic critics like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt valued imagination, creativity, and personal expression.
2. Value of Emotion:
18th Century: Emotional responses were seen as potentially disruptive to rational analysis.
19th Century: Emotions were considered essential to the aesthetic experience and integral to understanding literature.
These are just two key differences, but many others exist, including focus on form vs. content, emphasis on imitation vs. originality, and role of the critic.
Romantic Period and Criticism:
a) When did the Romantic period begin? Around 1780s-1830s (varying definitions).
b) Major Romantic critics: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Hazlitt.
c) Major features of Romantic poetry:
Emphasis on imagination and emotion:Poets like Wordsworth emphasized individual imagination and emotional expression as key sources of poetic power.
Embrace of nature: Nature was seen as a source of inspiration, beauty, and moral truth, often presented in idealized or symbolic forms.
d) Chief features of Romantic criticism:
Organic form: Emphasis on organic unity and growth within a work, rejecting rigid rules and prioritizing internal coherence.
Importance of imagination: Imagination was seen as a transformative power,shaping both literature and human understanding.
Subjectivity of interpretation:Recognition of the individual reader's role in constructing meaning from literature.
e) Greatest critical document: William Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802).
f) Wordsworth's theory of criticism: Emphasized emotional response, common language, and poetry's ability to "recollect in tranquillity" powerful childhood experiences.
g) Biographia Literaria: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's critical text (1817), exploring imagination, poetry, and literary theory.
h) Coleridge's theory of imagination: Distinguished between primary and secondary imagination, with the primary being a creative force shaping reality, and the secondary being the poet's ability to use language to re-present that experience.
i) Coleridge's theory of poetry: Poetry uses "suspension of disbelief" to create pleasure and insight, balancing imagination with moral purpose.
Romantic vs. Victorian Criticism:
10) Major differences:
Romanticism: Emphasis on emotion,imagination, subjective experience.
Victorianism: Increasing attention to social issues, morality, and historical context.
11) Greatest Victorian critic: Matthew Arnold.
12) Major critical studies:
Culture and Anarchy: Criticized English class divisions and advocated for cultural education.
On the Study of Poetry: Argued for poetry's importance in individual and societal development.
13) Arnold's theory of criticism:
High seriousness: Literature should address important moral and cultural issues.
Comparative criticism: Studying great works of different cultures to learn from their strengths.
Touchstones: Identifying classic works as standards for judging other literatur