Arnolds Dover Beach and Wordsworths Tintern Abbey Essay example -- p

A reflection on Arnolds Dover rim and Wordsworths Tintern AbbeyPoetry that establishes its raison dtre as linguistic play is, for Wordsworth, a matter of frolic and idle pleasureas if it were a thing as impersonal as a taste for rope-dancing, or frontiniac or sherry (Preface 250). Wordsworth condemns poets whose efforts contribute in the main in celebrating formal experimentation he discriminates against poetry that has recourse to what he calls a superlatively contemptible (265) language. Wordsworth advises his readership to mistrust what he calls the infinite caprices (261) of poetic composition, and he claims that such artifice undermines what he holds as poetrys true task. He is skeptical of poets who break in upon the sanctity of truth of their pictures by flying and accidental ornaments, and endeavor to excite admiration of themselves by arts (260). instead of celebrating metrical aesthetics as a pursuit valuable in its own right, Wordsworth regrets verse that compromises content for the whimsical satisfaction of encumbrance and immediacy of impression. To safeguard poetry from such intransigence, then, Wordsworth proposes a poetry that is to a greater extent transcendental or conceptual. He seems to conjoin poetry and philosophy with a greater end in view, no doubt one heart-to-heart of his own endeavor in mapping out a discipline of his introspective self Aristotle, I have been told, hath said that poetry is the close philosophic of all writing. It is so. Its object is truth, not individual and local, but familiar and operative not standing upon external testimony, which gives strength and divinity to the court of justice to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. (Preface 258)This statement ill... ...edArnold, Matthew. Dover Beach. The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. Ed. C. B. Tinker and H. F. Lowry. Oxford University Press, 1950. 210-212.Arnold, Matthew. Wordsworth. Essays in Criticism second series. Ed. S. R. Litt lewood. London Macmillan, 1951. 73-96.McEathron, Scott. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. A Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford Blackwell, 1999. 144-156.Morgan, Thas. Rereading disposition Wordsworth between Swinburne and Arnold. Victorian Poetry 244 (1986 Winter) 427-439.Trickett, Rachael. Wordsworth and Arnold. The Wordsworth Circle 201 (1989 Winter) 50-56.Wordsworth, William. Tintern Abbey. Romanticism, 1st ed. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford Blackwell, 1994. 240-244.Wordsworth, William. 1802 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. Romanticism, 1st ed. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford Blackwell, 1994. 250-269.