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

A reflection on Arnolds Dover Beach and Wordsworths Tintern AbbeyPoetry that establishes its raison dtre as linguistic play is, for Wordsworth, a matter of amusement and groundless pleasureas if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or frontiniac or sherry ( usher in 250). Wordsworth condemns poets whose efforts contribute mainly in celebrating evening gown 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 invention 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 transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavor to excite confusion of themselves by arts (260).Instead of celebrating metrical aesthetics as a pursuit valuable in its own right, Wordsworth regrets verse t hat compromises content for the tearaway(a) satisfaction of effect and immediacy of impression. To safeguard poetry from such intransigence, then, Wordsworth proposes a poetry that is more transcendental or conceptual. He seems to conjoin poetry and ism with a greater end in view, no doubt one receptive of his own endeavor in mapping out a breeding of his introspective self Aristotle, I have been told, hath said that poetry is the most philosophic of all writing. It is so. Its object is truth, not individual and local, but general and shamus not standing upon external testimony, which gives strength and divinity to the tribunal 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 bite series. Ed. S. R. Littlewood. 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 Nature 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.