Literature as a Societal Cornerstone

Note: The following is an essay originally written for Professor Niyi Osundare's Poetry as a Genre class during the Fall 2010 semester at the University of New Orleans. Date of creation: November 22, 2010. If referring to this essay academically, please remember to make the appropriate citations so as to avoid running afoul of your institution's plagiarism policy.

To understand the extent of the act of iconoclasm in the work of William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, and the far reaching affects upon the Romantic Movement, affecting literary traditions from that period forward, one must first take into consideration other factors. Firstly, the intricate link between the earliest English literature and the English cultural mindset cannot be ignored, as anything that comments on the tradition is simultaneously making a commentary on the society from which it originates, and, in this case, provided a strong influence on this infant society. Further, oral literature, inherent in its nature as a device of transmission, creates a genealogy of literature, so much so that the lineage of critical thought can almost be traced backwards along a trail of mentors and disciples, exemplified by the parallels in the relationships between Jonathan Swift and John Dryden, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and many others.

To define "English literature," one must consider what defines "England." By the strictest descriptor, King Alfred/AElfred declared himself "Rex Anglorium," translated as "King of the English," in 865 C.E., simultaneously naming a nation and himself its ruler. The title "Rex Anglorium" is Latin, exposing the fact that England was a pigdin nation that was born out of multiple cultural identities struggling for dominance for centuries. The Latin influence first emerged in 55 C.E., when Romans first gained a significant presence in the British Isles, finding that those living there were largely more receptive to Roman influence than the Greeks, and the language was strongly influenced by the classically educated Latin linguists who settled there. In 449, the language was further influenced by an influx of new inhabitants of what historians term "Germanic" origin, but this is a misnomer; these immigrants, comprised of Angles, Jews, Frisians, and Celts, merely spoke a language that shared a common etymological influence with German.

The name "England" itself is was a misapplied portmanteau, derived from "Angle-land," as it was deemed by Augustine, an emissary of Pope Gregory who was sent to influence the inhabitants of the Isles toward the Roman church, with great success; by the end of the Eighth Century, there were a significant number of Celtic monasteries throughout the island. Even "Caedmon's Hymn," one of the oldest examples of English literature, dated circa 731 C.E., utilizes terminology, such as "Creator," "Lord," and, most tellingly, "Heaven's kingdom," that is overtly Christian in its influence (Cope).

As the child of so many fathers, English literature found itself struggling to establish its own cultural heritage. Upon the arrival of Christian missionaries, pagan celebrations of the natives were assimilated by the proto-colonialist imperialism of Catholicism, such as the winter solstice and spring harvest being co-opted by the Christian tradition to become Christmas and Easter. These new festivals became an amalgam of both; in much the same way, the "English" culture emerged as a conflation of many different entities. A few defining characteristics arose, incorporating aspects that were keenly related to narrative tradition that other, older cultures, did not.

This narrative conscientiousness was obvious in both aspects of poetry, form and textual content. For centuries, the form of the literary tradition of the British Isles could be defined by its strict adherence to verbal conservatism, designed for the sole purpose of conserving and retaining crucial information from recitation to recitation. Its other priority was in the content itself, and its function: almost all of the early epics, most notably Beowulf, but also "The Dream of the Rood," "The Battle of Malden," and others were concerned with being encyclopedic in nature, providing narrative and education. Furthermore, this narrative was always that of a society of warriors preoccupied with honor. But these pieces of literature, pseudo-historical though they may be, provide insight into the nature of what this infant society held to be of utmost importance.

The primary concerns of this early literature were glory and its antithesis, shame. These were not questions of morality or ethics: "glory" was considered that which was done so that it might be favorably remembered, not necessarily that which was "good," and further, glory required an audience to be of any importance. Conversely, "shame" was something that could be considered morally or logistically correct (for instance, strategic retreat), but left behind an unfavorable reputation. Even at its conception, the entirety of English society was influenced by a preoccupation with literature as a record of history. This is the origin of the "bard," or "scop," a man whose occupation was to recite verse, and here an important distinction must be made. The bard was not a poet, and was not concerned with creation, but recitation, which was the central component in the identifiable form of the works (Cope). This obsession with repetition reinforced belief, never challenged it, and it is this byproduct of early English narrative tradition that Wordsworth would finally bring to its knees after it had been weakened by other early critical theorists like Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Swift.

There is an unintentional motif that flows like an undercurrent in English Literary criticism, that of students becoming authorities in their own right by challenging the precepts of their mentors in the same field. Just as Coleridge's most noteworthy work is primarily motivated by the discussion of the literary ideas of Wordsworth, so did Swift's body of work make reference to Dryden's. A great deal of Dryden's satire was written utilizing a trope which was popular in his day, that of "imitation," which was defined differently than in the modern era. "Imitation" was not merely writing "in the style of" some prior author, but was an intellectual exercise in which one would attempt to enter into the mind of a deceased author and produce literature as that person would if he (and it was almost always a man) were currently commenting on events. Demonstrating the recurring role of the poet as iconoclast, Swift denounced this literary exercise in favor of his pet genres, the mock epic and the mock pastoral.

Despite his own reputation as someone who thumbed his nose at the established literary tradition, it is impossible to deny the influence that Swift had on Wordsworth. Part of this is born out of the nature of the publishing industry of the time. The first several pages of Swift's Gulliver's Travels consisted of an "advertisement," as the first few pages of a work were often torn from the binding and tacked up in shops to encourage the consumer to purchase it. As a result, these same pages often became the primary focus of an author. Swift, as subversive as his spiritual descendant Wordsworth would be, created an outlandishly falsified list of sponsors and reviews (Crump). Wordsworth's "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" was included with Lyrical Ballads during its first printing in 1798, and Wordsworth did so without the prior knowledge of his collaborator, Coleridge. Originally titled "Advertisement," it was mainly a running sales pitch, and that outline is still present in the expanded revision that appeared in the 1802 version (August 30, 2007).

With the background for Romanticism firmly established, one can see which aspects Wordsworth rejected, but it is not this iconoclasm for which he is remembered, but the new literary tradition he espoused. He took great pride in being a burr in the hide of the "Establishment," but his attempts to erect his own ideology as the supreme delineator of poetic thought turned him into an ironic figure, as his peers and successors were able to just as readily disprove many of the notions he espoused during the poetic interregnum. His own precepts became the establishment, which was ultimately deposed.

What were Wordsworth's ideas, as espoused in his "Preface"? He wrote that he "translated his democratic sympathies," and that his "incidents and situations [were] not from Buckingham Palace," meaning that his lyrics were meant for the peasants, children, criminals, and the lower class. Furthermore, poetry should be written in "the ordinary language of prose when prose is well written," not a vocabulary obsessed with the Latinate but utilize a diction that was more image conscious and relied on concrete ideas, arguing that poetry kept people in society essentially human by keeping them emotionally alive and morally sensitive, and should thus be accessible to those who had no received no formal education. As such, he stated, poetry should not only remove itself from the concern of the upper classes, but that each poet should write with a more bucolic audience in mind. His central idea, epitomized in his exaltation of the "passions of the heart" which "speak a plainer language," was no more than the supposition that human passion finds more fertile soul when it concerns itself with the position of the rural man, a life of humility that allows these passions to mature.

Coleridge sought to prove that poetry was not, as Wordsworth believed, capable of being reduced to such simple terms. Whereas Wordsworth stated that true poetry was an outpouring of emotion recalled in a moment of tranquility, Coleridge proves that this is not the case, and in doing so utilized forms that Wordsworth thought were antiquated. In his time, Wordsworth's most beloved work was "Tintern Abbey," (ironically, not a ballad, and thus not really qualified for inclusion in Lyrical Ballads), which has obvious commonalities with Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

"Abbey" makes use of blank verse that cycles between description and meditation, and captures a very Romantic, Transcendentalist idea, of nature reclaiming the ruins of a manmade building utilizing language that is almost pantheistic in nature (this is a reversal of Swift's mock pastoral, which sought to describe the urban in language similar to that of Virgil's Georgics). "Rime" is a more traditional ballad, composed of nice, short lines that comprise a much longer work that is intended to be set to music, and internal rhyme adds to the lyricism of the piece. Wordsworth knew that his audience would associate the church with spirituality, obviously, but Coleridge collected nautical information from publicly available captain's logbooks, knowing that his audience would associate the sea with the supernatural, and his oceanographic details lend credibility to the narrative. Both utilize pantheistic elements that were cornerstones of Romantic ideals (and alluded to the earliest "English" societies of the first century of the common era, which, as noted at the beginning of this essay, were Roman in origin), each with great subtlety: the Abbey is overcome by nature, and The Mariner's tale has sidenotes and summary, much like a Greek chorus.

This leads to a further level of metatextual commentary that is typical of Wordsworth. Romanticism is often defined by its prioritization of the natural and nature, with "Tintern Abbey" as its most triumphant example: "progress," here represented by the abbey, a less than subtle allusion to the estate of the clergy, is subsumed by the laborer class, metaphorically represented by nature. Wordsworth posited nature as an undiluted representation of the truth, and the plowman and his peers as posessing a language that was as close to a "true" language as possible, obtained through their symbiotic relationship with nature. This oddly presages many of the ideas explored by critical theorist Jacques Derrida in his deliberations on the pursuit of a more perfect communication, which will be explored momentarily.

The ideas of Coleridge were much broader than those of Wordsworth, as he sought a discourse on poetry that was descriptive, as opposed to the prescriptive ideals of his predecessor. He theorized that poetry exists without meter, and in fact may be the consequence of an idea, and that the idea of a poem, itself, must be greater than any one poem. His reasoning was that no one poem can encapsulate the full range of what it means to be a poem, just as no one person can completely encapsulate all that it means to be a human being, or, more specifically, no one poet can represent all that there is to being a poet. Coleridge added that what it is to be a poem and what it is to be a poet are intricately and inexplicably intertwined.

This is Coleridge's strongest comment on the declaration of Wordsworth that poetry can be solely defined by its language, specifically targeting the assertion that poetry can only be constructed using the language of the field, stating that poetry cannot be defined strictly by its form or its content. The use of poetic devices and tropes such as rhythm and meter would not immediately elevate any given prose material, nor could something be defined as a "poem" simply be adhering to the standards of these devices and using Wordsworth's favored diction.

As noted above, while he makes no explicit reference to Wordsworth in his works, Derrida's theories bear significant parallels to those of the poet. Derrida's primary discourse can be boiled down to one simple idea: that writing is in and of itself a kind of falsehood, that speaking is the degradation of the truly innate language of thought, and writing is further removed from that purity of thought than speaking. Wordsworth considered the "elevated" (and therefore contaminated) language of society's upper castes to be a learned deficiency, the "culture" imposed by the pedagogy inherently inferior to that of the more grounded working class. As such, he would likely be inclined to agree with Derrida, and would attribute this more "natural" language to a more "natural" way of life. Derrida even goes so far as to say that “The tie of writing to language is ‘superficial,’ ‘factitious’” (Derrida 25) Wordsworth lived several decades before Derrida, but pursued a similar train of thought, that theretofore literature had been the domain of the higher castes and that this had created a system that yielded a body of literature

that was valued for its artfulness and elevated, detached language.

Coleridge, better than Wordsworth, seems to understand that the idea that any language, rustic or otherwise, could be a true language, is inherently fallacious. Perhaps best encapsulated in his Biographia Literaria, where he states that if one were to investigate the etymology of phrases used by the laborer class, a geneaology could be traced back to university thought from decades previous, which had found its way down the ladder of social classes that we have previously discussed: from the learned aristocracy to the clergy to the laymen who plow the fields.

Whereas Wordsworth claims that the language of the rustic man is the "real" language, this is the precept which Coleridge seems to believe needs the most correction. He gives evidence of older, more well established literary authorities to support his claim that the language of the rustic man is separated from the formalities of the other classes by the thinnest of veils. By divesting both languages, the language of the court and the language of the field, of the peculiarities and idiosyncracies that arise naturally from the differences in social station and interaction, one finds that these differences are just as small or as vast as the variations in the laiety of diverse regions. Wordsworth views his own work as the imitation and the image of the real, the ideal language spoken by the masses, but this is a corruption of Platonic thought. Viewing Wordsworth and Coleridge through the lens of Derrida's ideas, one must interpret thought as the ideal, and the language of the aristocracy, the clergy, the untouchables, the workmen, and the slaves are the silhouettes cast on the walls of Plato's cave. None is more "correct" than any other, and to privilege one mere shadow of language as more real than another is patently absurd.

The importance of Wordsworth and Coleridge as Romantic theorists, and thus in the canon of English literature as a whole, cannot be ignored. While their ideas were largely built on the trend towards Deconstructionism that had already been established by prior writers like Swift and Dryden, their works are so outspoken and their ideas so well-argued that their contribution stands out. Even more tellingly, the vehemence with which their followers would confront their assumptions proves just how pivotal their work was.

Most notable among these followers was John Keats, who argued that Wordsworth overstepped his bounds by not merely supposing that the system of literature in place was elitist and creatively stagnant, but by presumptuously making grand gestures about what poetry was and was not while citing his own novel ideas as absolute truth. Wordsworth defined the form of a poem, then Coleridge tore down those assumptions with his rhetorical points about how poetry must be a fusion of form and thought, melody and image, to truly be a poem, and that meter and rhythm were integral to the nature of poetry, but not its sole definors.

Keats' letters reveal at least a grudging admiration for Coleridge, and his conceptions of the inherent intertwining of poet and poetry appear to be largely informed by Coleridge's precepts. With Wordsworth's arguments about form torn down by Coleridge, Keats uses Coleridge's conception of the inextricable link between poetry and poet in an attempt to rebuild the concept of poetry, not by addressing the poem, but the poet. To this end, he rejected the concept of ego, expressing not only an artistic comfort in the mysterious, but privileging it as a necessity, as it is from a lack of knowledge that knowledge is created. Just as a large hole in the ground is required for a body of water to form, so too does ignorance create knowledge.

From this discussion of these primary figures of the Romantic Movement, certain innate aspects of English literature come to light. Firstly, that it is a body of literature which, due to its origins as a conglomerate culture with disparate influences from various sources and languages, predisposes itself towards introspection and concerns about not only the nature of language, but the nature of history. Secondly, as it was the nature of the bard's work to affirm belief through repetition, the rise of discourse and independent, clashing viewpoints led to the use of criticism as its own literary trope. Thus, iconoclasm quickly became a cornerstone of the English literary tradition. Thirdly, due to its nature as a descendant of oral tradition, English literary theory can be traced along a chain of mentors and students. Often, these disciples found their footing as authorities in their own right by challenging the assumptions of their predecessors. Finally, English literature can trace its roots back along this chain to an infant society which privileged glorification and immortalization in epic poetry, showing that the concept of an English "society" as a whole is born out of, and inextricably linked to, literature.

Works Cited:

Cope, Kevin. British Literature I. Louisiana State University. Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge. 28 Jan 2007. Lecture.

Cope, Kevin. Major British Authors. Louisiana State University. Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge. 22 Jan 2007. Lecture.

Crump, Rebecca. British Literature I. Louisiana State University. Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge. 30 April 2007. Lecture.

Derrida, Jacques. Positions. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 25. Print.

Works Referenced:

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "From Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions." Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Volume B. Ed.. Joseph Black. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Print.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in Seven Parts." Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Volume B. Ed.. Joseph Black. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. "A Descrition of a City Shower." Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Volume A. Ed.. Joseph Black. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. "From Gulliver's Travels." Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Volume A. Ed.. Joseph Black. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Print.

Wordsworth, William. "Advertisement." Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Volume B. Ed. Joseph Black. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Print.