“Jeff, if there is more complexity on your thought then it might be worth 
signalling it in your comments, rather than making bald and 
insupportable generalisation from which you then have to backtrack. 
And I'm not much taken with your insistence on the ‘influential’, 
because it's kind of wobbly.”

I recall mentioning quite a few times to others, here, that the argument 
about influence etc. was more nuanced than I had space to express 
here. That’s why I posted my chapters, which you seem not to have 
read. You seem to have read my Jacket article though, which was 
adapted from a section of chapter five. But the thrust of my argument 
about Wordsworth is to be seen in the chapters before that. As I said 
to Jamie, until you and others read them there is no point in my 
discussing the matter. I’m sorry if this is unreasonable, but it is 
necessary for an informed debate.

“But hey. I just wanted to say that critical thought about poetry is of 
course influential, but in the end it's not nearly as influential as 
poems.” lal?

Really? And how are poems influential in the absence of critical and 
academic dissemination of their perceived qualities?  Was The Waste 
Land, for instance, influential because the general public may have 
liked it, or because of Pound and other critics advocating its style? And 
was this estimation carried forward by the public or critics? I think the 
latter.

“And as far as criticism goes, if we're talking influence, it seems really 
odd to make Wordsworth so dominant and to wholly ignore Coleridge.”

Again, as I have repeated many times, here, I have a chapter on 
Coleridge. You can read it if you wish.

“As I recall, Richard Holmes makes a fairly convincing argument that 
many of those ideas (especially those about the sponteneous overflow 
of feeling) in the introduction to Lyrical Ballads originated from 
Coleridge.”

Allison, yes, I am conscious of this and my Coleridge chapter sources 
Holmes on this matter and supports his view. I already mentioned in an 
earlier post here that if it wasn’t for Coleridge’s liking the ideas of 
Hartley then Wordsworth wouldn’t have been influenced by Hartley as 
much as he was. Coleridge was in many ways Wordsworth’s mentor. 

“Certainly Wordsworth wrote that preface in collaboration with him (and 
Dorothy), and Biographia Literaria is as crucial to understanding English 
Romanticism as anything Wordsworth wrote.”

Again, I am aware of this. I go into it in chapter 2. By the way, I don’t 
think Dorothy helped him write the Preface. Some of her journal entries, 
which I discuss in relation to Wordsworth’s Preface, inspired some of 
his poetry, though. Coleridge, certainly, was the force behind some of 
the ideas in the Preface. So you have no argument with me there. Again 
all this is in my thesis.

“Certainly Coleridge's thought can be traced through Emerson to 
Nietzsche and informed much subsequent English poetry criticism, and 
it seems pretty indisputable that he was the
more interesting thinker of the two. But maybe I'm biased.”

Again, see my Coleridge chapter.

“It might be more interesting to posit that in Lyrical Ballads Coleridge 
and Wordsworth set two poles of English romanticism: the plain and 
everyday on the one hand, and the uncanny reaches of
imagination on the other. After all, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was 
in Lyrical Ballads as well as the stuff of everyday. In any case, calling 
the Lyrical Ballads a synonym for Wordsworth does poor Coleridge a big 
disservice.”

Again, I go into this in my chapter on Coleridge.








On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:13:13 +1000, Alison Croggon 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Jeff, if there is more complexity on your thought then it might be
>worth signalling it in your comments, rather than making bald and
>insupportable generalisation from which you then have to backtrack.
>And I'm not much taken with your insistence on the "influential",
>because it's kind of wobbly.
>
>But hey. I just wanted to say that critical thought about poetry is of
>course influential, but in the end it's not nearly as influential as
>poems. And as far as criticism goes, if we're talking influence, it
>seems really odd to make Wordsworth so dominant and to wholly 
ignore
>Coleridge. As I recall, Richard Holmes makes a fairly convincing
>argument that many of those ideas (especially those about the
>sponteneous overflow of feeling) in the introduction to Lyrical
>Ballads originated from Coleridge. Certainly Wordsworth wrote that
>preface in collaboration with him (and Dorothy), and Biographia
>Literaria is as crucial to understanding English Romanticism as
>anything Wordsworth wrote. Certainly Coleridge's thought can be 
traced
>through Emerson to Nietzsche and informed much subsequent English
>poetry criticism, and it seems pretty indisputable that he was the
>more interesting thinker of the two. But maybe I'm biased.
>
>It might be more interesting to posit that in Lyrical Ballads
>Coleridge and Wordsworth set two poles of English romanticism: the
>plain and everyday on the one hand, and the uncanny reaches of
>imagination on the other. After all, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
>was in Lyrical Ballads as well as the stuff of everyday. In any case,
>calling the Lyrical Ballads a synonym for Wordsworth does poor
>Coleridge a big disservice.
>
>xA
>
>On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 6:15 AM, Jeffrey Side<[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
>> David, all I can do is to appeal to your sense of logic.
>>
>> If we accept that Lyrical Ballads was influential in changing poetical
>> language (not the form of poetry, just the language) from a more
>> artificial one to a more plainer one. And if we accept that the 
majority
>> of mainstream poetry since has been written in this sort of 
language,
>> then we have to conclude that Lyrical Ballads has been more 
influential
>> than the poets you mention who came after Wordsworth.
>>
>> I use Lyrical Ballads as a “synonym” for Wordsworth.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:14:42 -0700, David Latane
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>>It's perhaps relevant that the sonnet sequence that William Carlos
>> Williams destroyed en route to becoming "modern" was explicitly
>> described by him as "Keatsian."
>>>For what it's worth in an article published some time ago I did some
>> counting of the direct mentions of Romantic poets by later poets, 
using
>> the C-H Full-text English Poetry Database. In the first third of the
>> century, as one might expect, Byron and Wordsworth have many 
more
>> mentions--the difference being that many more of Wordsworth's are
>> derogatory or satiric. By the end of the century both Shelley and 
Keats
>> are more often apostrophized by poets than either Wordsworth and
>> Byron. Amy Lowell didn't write a biography of Wordsworth.
>>>Jeffrey makes good points about Wordsworth's didacticism--though
>> they were made memorably by Keats in a famous letter--but it's
>> precisely W's didactism that made him a Victorian (d. 1850) for the
>> youngsters of 1900; Keats for them was a thing of beauty and joy
>> forever.
>>>This discussion has sent me back to the lovely discussions of
>> Romantic language and modernism in The Pound Era ("The 
Invention of
>> Language" and "Words Set Free"). Kenner juggles British Romantics,
>> French symbolistes, Poe, Whitman with masterful ease.
>>>David Latané
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Editor, Masthead:  http://www.masthead.net.au
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com