D.B. Mile, Author at LitAside

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the greatest poets to ever bless the world with his works. Together with his friend Wordsworth, he was a founder of the Romantic movement in England. He was one of the most famous critics of W. Shakespeare of his time, and he is the main culprit of the phrase “suspension of disbelief” which he coined in one the seminal work Biographia Literaria.

S. T. Coleridge – Literary output

Coleridge wrote poems of mystery. Such poems are Kubla Khan (1797), an exotic and mysterious poem, and Christabel (1797) 1^st part and (1800) 2^nd part, a poem about a creature half snake, half woman existing between worlds.

Also such poem is The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1798) published in Lyrical ballads together with Wordsworth. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long poem that resembles English and Scottish ballads which contain moral in the story with a purpose to teach. It’s filled with supernatural symbols which heavily reflect Coleridge’s suspense of disbelief.

Biographia Literaria is a prose work, an autobiography in disclosure by which Coleridge, alongside Wordsworth, established himself as one of the greatest literary critics of his time. It is his best work, because it is a description of his exceptional spiritual and literary intellect. It consists his understanding for creating poetry, where he introduced his view on imagination and how it affects the creation process of poetry.

Coleridge’s View on Imagination

Coleridge distinguishes between three types of imagination: primary imagination, secondary imagination, and fancy.

Imagination was the key word in poetry of romanticism. It represented the creative power of God, and the poet is the “creator” who uses this malleable imagination to craft poetry. Or, with other works, without imagination, poetry is impossible. Coleridge’s take on imagination is that there are three parts: primary, secondary and fancy, which are all explained in the work Biographia Literaria.

Coleridge’s Primary Imagination

Primary imagination is the living power and prime agency of all human perception, a repetition in a finite mind of the eternal of creation in the infinite I am.

According to Coleridge, the primary imagination in humans is continuation of God’s self-consciousness; that our minds somehow participate in the creative mind of God. It means that our imagination not only comes from a divine source but is essentially one with the divine mind.

Coleridge’s Secondary Imagination

Secondary imagination is considered as an echo to the primary imagination. Coexisting with the conscious will, yet still identical with the primary imagination in the kind of its agency and differing only in degree and in mode of its operation.

The secondary imagination resolves, dissolves in order to recreate or where this process is rendered impossible at all events it struggles to realize and to unify. The secondary imagination is the vital, active imagination that strives to find the spiritual meaning with things.

The Fancy

The Fancy has no other counters to play with but fixities and divinities. Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space where it is blended with and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word “choice”.

Imagination and fancy are not completely separated from one another. According to Coleridge, imagination must have fancy, in fact the highest intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.

Coleridge’s Poetic Faith and Good Sense

Poetic faith, or Suspension of Disbelief

As Coleridge put it, its function is to stop our disbelief for a moment, to accept the supernatural and to use it but not as a dominant content and to relate it to human situation adding human interest.

Good sense

Good sense is the body of poetic genies; fancy its drapery motion, its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in union and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

Coleridge’s “Esemplastic Imagination”

In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge explains the term esemplastic “to shape into one“. It is important to note that esemplastic was a word borrowed from the Greek “to shape,” and it referred to the imagination’s ability to shape into one. He felt such a term was necessary as “It would confounded with usual import of the word imagination”.

Uncategorized - 04/13/2020

T. S. Eliot: The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism

T. S. Eliot, alongside Ezra Pound, is perhaps the most influential poet of the Modernism. The two paved the way for the Imagist movement in poetry that was prominent in the early 20th century. Much like Lawrence, he did not consider Hamlet a success. Eliot said Shakespeare tried to tackle a problem “which proved too much for him”.

Eliot Considered Hamlet a Failure but Loved Shakespeare’s Other Works

Eliot considered Hamlet a failure. But, he praised the two Roman tragedies Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. Strange, because most of the focus of Shakespearean criticism revolves around his ‘major’ works.

There are no major or minor works of Shakespeare. All of them are extraordinary pieces of literature. It’s just that some of his works have been exploited more than others. And critics reviewed what was popular, Eliot included.

Eliot Referenced Shakespeare in His Works

Eliot references Shakespeare’s works in his own. For example, we have two references to Shakespeare’s plays in two of Eliot’s greatest poems. One is in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – a clear reference to Hamlet. The other is in The Waste Land, which contains references to Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet. To reference someone’s work into your own is the biggest acknowledgment.

T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare’s Borrowing

“Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum” (Eliot, 1920). All Shakespeare’s works, except for The Tempest, are based on previous works.

It is a historical fact that playwrights borrowed ideas from others. The truth is there was no copyright law in the Elizabethan age. This was the common practice of the Elizabethan playwrights.

Shakespeare embraced this idea of borrowing. He was so well-read that we can see the influence in his works from almost every major work written up until his time. Starting from Ancient Greece, up to contemporary Elizabethan drama/poetry, he appropriated everything. As Eliot points out, Shakespeare was a living encyclopedia of history. This is a feat that few people of his time achieved.

Shakespeare Used Everyday Language

Playwrights in Elizabethan times often used common elements in their plays. You can see them in English Renaissance drama, not only in the works of Shakespeare. “We think of Shakespeare perhaps as the dramatist who concentrates everything into a sentence, ‘Pray you undo this button,’ or ‘Honest honest lago’; we forget that there is a rhetoric proper to Shakespeare at his best period which is quite free from the genuine Shakespearean vices either of the early period or the late” (Eliot, 1920).

Shakespeare did include some everyday phrases from Elizabethan times in his works. Playwriting was a craft after all. So, like any craft, it required catering to the customer to make more money. And the customers were both literate and illiterate.

Everyone Understood Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare’s plays catered to everyone. Both the illiterate groundlings (who paid the least to watch the play) and the nobility understood them. The simplest-minded people laughed at what we today think is complex.

Shakespeare Wrote for His Time

Shakespeare included elements from each layer of society in his plays. So, you need to know the political, religious, and everyday life in the Elizabethan era to read his works. These elements without a deep understanding of life in Shakespeare’s time are weird. Which is why you should read my Reading Shakespeare series.

T. S. Eliot on the Soliloquy

The soliloquy is the greatest weapon of Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama. Some of the greatest instances of wordings in literature are Shakespeare’s soliloquies. Eliot accepts this fact. “The really fine rhetoric of Shakespeare occurs in situations where a character in the play sees himself in a dramatic light” (Eliot, 1920).

A lot of people may not have read Hamlet. But they do know the lines of the greatest soliloquy in all of drama: “To be, or not to be, that’s the question.”

It’s a simple, yet profound example of how memorable these soliloquies are.

But, Shakespeare is far more than just the “To be’” soliloquy. There’s Richard’s “Now is the winter of our discontent”. Followed by Macbeth’s “be-all and end-all”. And Prospero’s epilogue, Shylock’s speech on equality – the list goes on.

The Soliloquy Offers a Peak in a Character’s Thoughts

Each of Shakespeare’s soliloquies gives us insight into the character’s thoughts. Through them, the audience understands the character in a way that the other characters of the plays can’t. If spoken directly to the audience, the soliloquy is an “aside”.

The Aside Soliloquy

The “aside” soliloquy is like a secret that the character entrusts with the reader. And, they become accomplices in the way the character acts. They know a secret of theirs no one else knows.

The soliloquy is an ingenious method of the Elizabethan drama playwrights. And Shakespeare was the solemn ruler over the rest. He crafted the most memorable and profound soliloquies.

T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare’s Universality

What makes Shakespeare stand out from other playwrights are his timeless plays.

We can take any and give it a modern spin without it losing its meaning. Eliot understands this universality of Shakespeare. “Shakespeare is ‘universal’ (if you like) because he has more of these tones than anyone else” (Eliot, 1920). Eliot, again, refers to the ‘borrowing’ that happened in Elizabethan times. After all, it’s no secret that Shakespeare borrowed from Surrey, Marlowe, and Kyd.

Everyone had a specific tone of writing. But, Shakespeare has them all, hence Eliot calling him ‘universal’. Shakespeare managed to perfect everything that he borrowed. This includes the blank verse, the sonnet, the tragedy, and the comedy.

The genius of the Bard is because he didn’t limit himself to a specific tone of writing. Which is what his contemporaries did. Instead, he wrote everything to perfection.

The Sacred Wood: “Hamlet and His Problems”

To view Hamlet as a villain rather than a tragic hero is a repeating topic. It’s like this: He is walking the plank if you will. He sometimes leans to the good side, sometimes to the bad side, but he never falls over in the water.

“FEW critics have even admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary’ (Eliot, 1920). Eliot considers Hamlet one of the major problems of the play.

He argues against the exaggerated modern view on Hamlet. The studies of human psychology happening in Eliot’s lifetime are why he gave this argument.

Sadly, he makes the same mistake that he argues against: Not viewing the play as it should be. Hamlet requires a timeless perspective not burdened by psychological analyses. Nor burdened by religion (as is the case with D.H. Lawrence). Instead, Eliot views it from the prism of the psychological.

Sure, Hamlet does have his problems. But, to reduce him to a mere mentally deranged character is just horrible. Eliot states that “Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him”. But that is the whole point of the greatness of Hamlet! If he were to be so shallow and understandable by anyone, he wouldn’t have been so great. He would’ve been mediocre.

”Hamlet Is the Mona Lisa of Literature”

Critics often concentrate their arguments around Shakespeare’s most famous works. But, Eliot expands his critical horizon further. “Coriolanus may be not as ‘interesting’ as Hamlet, but it is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success. And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the Mona Lisa of literature” (Eliot, 1920).

A bold statement. But, it proves my notion that sometimes literary geniuses limit themselves. In the case of Eliot, he views something as great as Hamlet through the confines of the psychological.

Comparing a static object, no matter how great or how alive it might seem, to the actual living and breathing Hamlet… Hamlet is everyman! You can’t! He’s burdened by problems like you and I. He tries to resolve them by making mistakes and trying to rectify and learn from each. Like you and I. He has traits shared by all of us and this is why he’s so appealing. Hamlet is not a great tragic character – he is you and I. He is us.

And Hamlet’s like this for a reason. People identify with him and his suffering. And, they leave the performance with a better version of their former selves, which you might know as catharsis.

Final Words

Eliot over-analyzes Hamlet from a psychological view. He tries to derail the reader from the fact that Shakespeare perfected everything he appropriated. He tries to make you think the Bard was a mediocre writer that was not at all original. And he degrades Hamlet to a lunatic and mocks the cliché lines in the plays.

He even went as far as saying people appreciate the play Hamlet only because they see others do it.

But, in the end, his analysis is lacking. He can’t see the greatness of how Shakespeare’s elements in his plays work. How the bard created his characters in the plays as real people. And this is why although he’s a great poet, he’s a mediocre critic.

Drama / Poetry - 02/07/2020

A. C. Bradley: Shakespearean Tragedy

Bradley is the first British critic of Shakespeare of the 20th century. His seminal work Shakespearean Tragedy is regarded as a classical piece of criticism on the bard.

Although at first this work was considered reputable and was reprinted multiple times, his approach became flawed in the eyes of the scholars of the early 1920s. This is because Bradley imagines Shakespeare’s characters as real people, and most of scholars did not agree with this.

This detachment from Bradley’s work is felt even more in the second half of the 20th century, but still some scholars paid tribute to the greatness of the classical approach of Bradley and the view of ‘character’ as a historical category of evaluation.

One of these scholars is Harold Bloom.

Shakespeare’s Collaborations with Other Playwrights

Bradley’s work represents a turning point in the way critics of Shakespeare thought and analyzed Shakespeare’s works, and it represents a basis for the modern criticism that is to come.

There is no doubt that Shakespeare collaborated with other playwrights in the writing of some of his plays. Bradley states: “Timon [of Athens] stands on a different footing. Parts of it are unquestionably Shakespeare’s… But much of the writing is evidently not his” (Bradley, 1904).

It is known that certain parts of Shakespeare’s earlier plays were written by other people. But, this was the common practice of the day, so there is nothing strange about this fact. Playwrights borrowed from one another. Since there was no copyright law at the time, piracy and borrowing was an everyday occurrence in the Elizabethan age.

Shakespearean Drama and the Balance of the Universe

The balance of the universe is an important element of the plays of this age. As a part of the Elizabethan World View, it represents a segment in the plays that is rather constant throughout the tragedies of this period.

As Bradley says, “We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe” (Bradley, 1904).

The Fatal Flaw of the Tragic Hero

With this excerpt, Bradley is referring to the way the balance in the universe is disrupted by the actions of the characters in the play.

The fatal flaw of the tragic hero is of utmost importance here, since it is the main characteristic of the tragic hero that disrupts the balance of the universe. Doesn’t matter if it’s murder (Macbeth killing Duncan) or some kind of an injustice (Lear banishing Cordelia).

This tragic flaw then sets in motion a certain chain of events which ultimately leads to the demise of the character, accompanied with catharsis for the viewer.

The Balance of the Universe Is Constant in Drama

The balance in the universe must be preserved, and once the tragic hero does the deed that disturbs this balance, the universe (macrocosm) turns on the character (microcosm) in order to restore the balance, an event which is followed by the tragic hero’s suffering. And through this suffering, they purify themselves from the deed that he has done.

A. C. Bradley on the Greatness of King Lear

To say that King Lear is Shakespeare’s greatest work is accepted by many a scholar and reader alike. There is something greater in Lear that is lacking in the other plays written by Shakespeare.

But there was a problem with Lear itself. So, the alternative version of King Lear came to be with a happy ending!

“Some twenty years after the Restoration, Nahum Tate altered King Lear for the stage, giving it a happy ending, and putting Edgar in the place of the King of France as Cordelia’s lover” (Bradley, 1904). This is a historical fact.

The Ending of King Lear Was Difficult

The end of King Lear is so unexpected and overwhelming that even the great Dr. Jonson (who was one of the biggest critics of his time) considered Shakespeare’s end of the play a great travesty. The play was played with the altered end for more than a century.

The reason for this is that King Lear, alongside Othello, is the darkest play written by Shakespeare. Bradley argues that although Lear is Shakespeare’s “greatest achievement, it is not his best play”. This is a matter of taste, for everyone understands Shakespeare’s plays in a different way.

Even Bradley himself says that if he views it as a drama, it is inferior to Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet. But when he regards it as a work of art, it’s on the same level with the greatest paintings. Like great symphonies or sculptures, King Lear is, according to Bradley, the greatest play Shakespeare ever wrote.

Bradley, as many others after him, points out the difficulty of staging King Lear, for the scope that Lear as a character takes is enormous and it demands a “purely imaginative realization”.

D.B. Mile