Preface .......... 1
William Blake .......... 5
A Vision of the Last Judgment .......... 5 The Ancient Britons .......... 19 On Homers Poetry.......... 24
William Wordsworth .......... 26 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) .......... 2 6 Preface to Poems (1815) .......... 50 Essay, Supplementary to the Preface (1815).......... 66
Samuel Taylor Coleridge .......... 93 BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA (1817) .......... 93 CHAPTER XII .......... 93 CHAPTER XⅢ .......... 123 CHAPTERXIV .......... 131 CHAPTER XV.......... 138 CHAPTERXVII.......... 145 CHAPTER XVⅢ.......... 159 On the Principles of Genial Criticism (Essay Third).......... 182 Agreeable .......... 182 Beautiful.......... 183 Recapitulation.......... 187
Thomas Love Peacock.......... 192 The Four Ages of Poetry (1820).......... 192
Percy Bysshe Shelley.......... 207 A Defence of Poetry.......... 207
John Keats.......... 239
Letters.......... 239 To Benjamin Bailey, 22nd November 1817.......... 239 To George and Tom Keats, 21st December 1817.......... 242 To John Hamilton Reynolds, 3rd February 1818.......... 242 To John Hamilton Reynolds, 19th February 1818.......... 248 To James Augustus Hessey, 9th Cotober 1818.......... 250 To Richard Woodhouse, 27th October 1818.......... 251 To George and Georgiana Keats, 16th December 1818.......... 253 To George and Georgiana Keats, 19th March 1819.......... 254 To Percy Bysshe Shelley, 16th August 1820.......... 256
William Hazlitt.......... 258
The Spirit of the Age or Contemporary Portraits.......... 258 Mr Coleridge.......... 258 Sir Walter Scott.......... 269 Lord Byron.......... 281 Mr Southey.......... 293 Mr Wordsworth.......... 302
內容試閱:
Preface
The collection in a single volume of the critical and theoretical writings by the English Romantics that will provide material for the reader interested in Romanticism to have a reasonably thorough course of readings is accumulated mainly with the consideration that the survival of the spirit of the Romantic Age might be plausibly a promotive agency in our cultivation of a sound and elevated society and that the way of critical and creative thinking of the English Romantics might spur the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ in our young people’s endeavour and attempt in their enterprise,business,and daily life. The tenor of the critical writings collected here are, though focusing upon, not confined to Romantics’ theoretical speculation of poetry and criticism of poetic compositions, with their attachment to emancipation, freedom, imagination, intuition, perception, etc elucidated elaborately and effectively here and there in their writings. A conscious observation of the contemporary society, a unfettered and steadfast contemplation of self in relation to others, and a sustained looking to nature and to the light of their own genius, is perhaps exactly what we want in the development our world, both material and intellectual. In short, the cultivation of a noble mind which prevails throughout the writings of the English Romantics, I hope, will help to strengthen and broaden the power of criticism with an aim at seeing ‘the object as in itself it really is’ and free us from remaining in ‘a sphere where alone narrow and relative conceptions have any worth and validity,’* thus of referential assistance to the establishment of a spirit of the age at present.
The selection of the essays in this volume abides by the general supposition maintained by critics at large. Thus William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats are the leading figures whose critical ideas have been acknowledged and commented world-widely ever since their writings were published, and they have been included in an impressive variety of collections and selections concerning Romanticism. In this volume I make no attempt to change the ordinance. However, I could not completely restrain myself from a personal preference though I know that objectivity is always the principle in any of this kind of sellections. Therefore there must be some writings or passages carrying a certain weight of importance not included in this volume, but that does not mean that the reader would not have the opportunity of acquiring a general understanding of the organic whole of the critical thought of the Romantic(s). Of course, there is a great difference in the handling of the particular writer. For example, I do not include Blake’s ‘Annotations to Reynolds’ Discourses’ and ‘Marginalia,’ which are usually taken as the basic enunciation of Blake’s critical thought and are thus preferred by other editors. Here the major consideration is that, as in the other writers in this volume, the whole text is provided as long as possible since the context is crucial in our understanding of the principal concepts and ideas of the Romantics (and thus the complete chapters rather than extracts are offered from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria and Keats’s letters). But we will not lose Blake’s opinions on the principal subjects of the age. I include here Wordsworth’s ‘Essay, Supplementary to the Preface’ and ‘Preface to Poems’ in addition to the ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads,’ so that the reader may discern the minute changes as well as the development of his theoretical thinking. Love Peacock’s ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’ and Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’ are as usual put together in oder that the reader see clearly the contrary speculations with regard to Romantic poetry. One thing out of the reader’s expectation is perhaps the inclusion of the passages from William Hazlitt’s The Spirit of the Age, the aim of which is for the modern reader to get a glimpse of the critical portraits of English Romantics by one of their contemporaries.
I will not supply anything like an introduction or a headnote for each part since I would rather the reader resort to his/her own judgment, not the preoccupation of the editor, for what ‘itself it really is.’ And neither will I provide footnotes unless I believe compulsary—the footnotes only brush aside the obstacles that hinder the reader’s understanding.
I am, of course, indebted to many people who have contributed in one way or another to the completion of a series of books published and to be published in Fujian Education Press, among which this is one. Special thanks go to Ms Li Yang and Liang Jing, whithout whose timely and effective help the series would never come into being.
Yuan Xianjun
* Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864).