allegations of s t Coleridge against Wordsworth's theory of poetry?

Answer 1

William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge together generated a revolution in English poetry. Their combined volume, the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, marked a significant turning away from the restraints of the classical tradition in poetry and a turning toward a freer, more experimental, and more emotionally charged lyricism.

Wordsworth's preface of 1800 and, later, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria were the manifestoes of a new aesthetic sense. Everything written before seemed suddenly old-fashioned or stale.

The reading public's taste in poetry was shaped for the rest of the century by the ideas of "what poetry really is," as stated by Wordsworth and Coleridge. The images and phrases of their poems passed into the common poetic discourse of the 19th century, bringing about such a change in taste that earlier poets were largely ignored or devalued.

During the romantic period poets and prose writers tended to share the assumption that all literature was basically about feelings and that the role of the writer was to recreate and explore feelings. They felt that mutually sympathetic feelings made people more morally sensitive and at the same time gave pleasure.

Joy and the loss of joy were popular topics. As the reading public grew in number and in sophistication, a variety of journals, reviews, and magazines--different kinds of periodicals--created outlets for poets and essayists to develop and mold public taste. Carrying out Wordsworth's proposal in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, they wrote familiarly, even intimately, of their own memories, dreams, and emotional histories.

With few exceptions, they found the self an inexhaustible source of material. Personal history and observation were assumed to be universally interesting, relevant, and full of meaning.

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