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The Formalist Criticism On British Romantic Poetry

Posted on:2009-09-05Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X WangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360272976114Subject:Comparative Literature and World Literature
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British romantic poetry was prosperous fromthe end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, breaking the rigid pattern of the Neoclassic poetry in language form, pursuing the naturalness of language and the freedom of style, and opening a brand-new poetry style in English poetry history. The romantic poetics of emotionalism, organicism and imagination have all exerted far-sighted influence to modern theories poetry criticism. However, from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s, different critical schools criticized the romantic poetry and the romantic poetics and doubted the value of the romantic poetry, leading it to marginalization.The basic tendency of the western literary criticism before the 1960s is Formalist Criticsim which focuses on the language form of the literary text. The schools of Formalist Criticism, from Russian Formalism, to New Criticism and to Structuralism Criticism, all try to make the objective and scientific critical study on the language of poetry. Generally speaking, the attitude of Formalist Criticism to British romantic poetry is avoiding, critical and indifferent: Due to the limitation of the theoretical range and language, Russian Formalism does not list romantic poetry into its study list; New Criticism represented by Eliot belittles it and what they prefer is Metaphysical poetry and modern poetry; Structuralism poetics represented by Culler just mentions romantic poetry superficially without putting it in the important position. However, since the 1960s, there has gradually been the interest in the study of British romantic poetry in the field of the western literary criticism, with the study angles being various. And basically, all these angles are based on the research achievements of the Formalist Criticism and restress the social and historical angels, showing the tendency of diversification.Although the Formalist Criticism criticizes the romantic poetry, through the summary of its thoeries, it can be found that Formalist Criticism which is closely related to modern linguistics shows the development sequence of being from the surface to the deep, from the concrete to the abstract and from the extreme to the compromised. What is more important is that some key concepts of Formalist Criticism are derived from the romantic poetics and they are the inheritage and development of the romantic poetics: Eliot's"Impersonality"can be traced back to Keats's"Negative Capacity"; the power of imagination is the key of romantic poetics and it is also the practical principle for the romantic poetry writing, while imagination is also echoed in Formalist Criticism especially in New Criticism, with Richards and Wellek highly praising the creative power of imagination; the"defamiliarization"theory put forward by the Russian Formalism, also bears the mark of romantic poetics, for the romantic poets such as Coleridge and Shelley and the romantic poetic theorist such as Hazlitt all put forward such idea that through some device like twisting to"make the familiar unfamiliar", and this is just the precursor of"defamiliarization"; the"organicism"represented by Coleridge is further developed in the Formalist New Criticism, and it is transformed into the"organic wholeness"based on the whole structure of poetry. All these key concepts of Formalist Criticism are inherited from Romanticism, which means that it is reliable and feasible both in theory and practice to prove the aesthetic value of British romantic poetry with the theories and approaches of Formalist Criticism.With the Formalist approaches to make the aesthetic interpretation to romantic poetry, it can not be that the theory of certain Formalist Criticism school is mechanically applied, but that the theories of different schools should be integrated in a modern, multiplied and comprehensive way and the analysis should be made from the perspectives of the sound, the meaning and the text structure, and finally the interpretive model of British romantic poetry should be built from the structuralism perspective.From the perspective of the sound system of language, the romantic poetry bears different types of rhyme and rhythm. There are free development and innovation on the basis of the traditional rhymes, which fully represents the free creative personality of the poets. The rhyme varies from ballad to Italian ottava rima, from the innovated heroic couplet to various rhymes of sonnets, playing romantic symphony and producing the musical aesthetic appreciation. Furthermore, through the appropriate change of rhyme and rhythm and through the reduplication and the aesthetic selection of the specific sound, the sound and meaning of the poem can be subtly combined, which may enhance the musical feature of the poem on the one hand and may represent the organic integration of sound and meaning and reinforce the meaning representation of the poem on the other hand.In the semantic analysis of the organic wholeness to the poetry, the Structuralist's"intertextualism"and the New Criticism's"contextualism"are integrated, and within the frame of the context,"the close reading"is applied to analyze such poetic components as metaphor, image, symbolism, ambiguity, paradox, irony and tension in both language layer and the noumenon layer. These poetic language features summarized by New Criticism to meet the standard of complexity and integration are also fully embodied in romantic poetry: Romanticism raises high the flag of creative imagination and therefore the common language could be covered by the extraordinary layer, making the metaphor full of the tension of long distance and disparity; meantime, also through the exertion of imagination, the image, metaphoric or symbolic, natural or supernatural, becomes the medium for the romantic poets to express emotion and convey meaning; the poetic ambiguity is even more represented in the romantic poetry, and the ambiguous language, ambiguous image and even the ambiguous circumstances all contribute to the unique charm of the romantic poetry; in romantic poetry there also exist a quantity of paradox, irony which show the conflictive relations, and metaphor which stresses long distance and disparity. All these can be included in the category of"tension", and it is just the key concept of"tension"that interprets the complexity and integration of the poetry structure.Through the formalist criticism on the sound, meaning and structure of the romantic poetry, the asthetic value of the romantic poetry is refound and promoted: the British romantic poetry bears not only the musical beauty of rhyme and rhythm, but also the organic structure of complexity and integration, in which various semantic elements interact with each other, conflict with each other, creating the ambiguous connotation full of tension. Furthermore, due to the rich creative imagination, the romantic poetry creates the"defamiliarization"aesthetic appreciation from the perspectives of the innovation of the poetic diction, diversity of representation and the fantastic subject matter, thus bearing the"literariness"so called by the Russian Formalism. In brief, the surface structure of the romantic poetry seems to be simple, but the complex deep structure is hidden behind it, and thus the romantic poetry bears the literariness, complexity and integration, conforming to the formalist standards. Therefore, the"humble"position of British romantic poetry should be promoted, and its aesthetic value should be reconsidered and reexalted.After the formalist criticism to the concrete language and structure of the romantic poetry, it is necessary to go beyond the literary text and make the macroscopic structrualist interpretation. Due to the different tendencies of the Structuralism Criticism, as far as the poetry is concerned, the structuralism poetics of Jonathan Culler can go closer to the subject of poetry. Therefore, it is positive to generalize the interpretive models of British romantic poetry. On the basis of the"impersonality of poetry", the"organic wholeness of poetry"and so on, there could be such other models as the following: making the subjective observation to the object and worshiping the nature; the romantic and nostalgic myth allusion; the"one-is-on-the-journey"type legend. The generalization of these models provides the macroscopic and abstract paradigm for the further taste of the aesthetic value of the British romantic poetry.
Keywords/Search Tags:Formalist Criticism, the Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism Poetics, Romantic Poetry
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