Expressivity J 49

2 Expressivity: the Romantic theory of expression

authorship T<he,various senses of the verb 'express' in the OED·me1u d e to ,press, squeeze or wring
out'; to 'represent ~y s°;1lpt~re, drawing, or painting' or to 'portray, delineate, ~epict'; to
Andrew Bennett
'represent symbohcally; . to represent in language . . . t o give
· utterance to'; and to 'put
one's tho~ghts mto wor~s' · As this ~ight suggest, the expressive theory of authorship,
and th~. idea of expr~ssion on which it is based, involve at least three interlocking
proposit10ns. In the firSt place, the theory involves the idea that communication is
effected by means of a translation or emission from 'inside' (from the speaker's or the
autho(_~ con,sci~us or ~ncons1~ous thoughts) to 'outside' (into language and onto paper
or compµter screen or towards an interlocutor). Secondly, it involves the idea that
In the most famous sentence from the most famous of his essays, 'The Death of the
communicatio~ is struc~n7d in terms of an original thought, feeling, or intention and
Author' (1967), Roland Barthes declares that the literary text is 'a tissue ' of quota~ions
~n'e _rep~esen~ation of that thought, feeling, or intention in words or in symbols-the
drawn from the innumerable centres of culture'. The statement eliminat~s the author
idea that language is (only) a copy of the thought or the feeling. Thirdly, it involves the
from the definition of the text. Instead, for Barthes, the text is purely textual, and the r~late<;i b\lt slightly differel}t,idea that language is made up of two intimately connected
author nowhere to be seen, radically absent, 'dead'. Since the author has been pro- elements: an original abstract sense or meaning, on the one hand and its formulation in
.Si' . ,
nounced 'dead', we must talk instead about a functionary called the 'writer' or 'scriptor'. ';'lord~, on ~e ot~e~. All of t~ese propositions are important in the expressive theory of
The writer or scriptor, Barthes proposes, originates nothing. Instead, he 'o r she simply authorship, and all are part of what the philosopher and cultural historian Michel
'imitate[s] a gesture that is always anterior'. Rather than 'expressing himself', this writer Foucault
';
suggests is a wider
\ !. ' • ' J .
shift in post-classical reconceptions of the expressive func-
simply 'translates' a 'ready-formed dictionary' whose words are 'only explainable t .j:". f _} ;
t}pn <;>f }~IJ-~c/-ge ~Wm a!l 'imitation and duplication of things' to a manifestation and
through .other words, and so on indefinitely'. Barthes's radical textuality is directed translation of 'the fundamental will of those who speak'.2 The author, as he or she is
against humanist and essentialist notions of the author. In particular, , it , is ·explicitly i~creasingly ~onceived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has ideas, feelings,
,l•.I 1, ,, ! ·
directed against the 'expressive theory' of authorship, a theory that posits the role bf the
.
interw~ms, and desires which emerge in the act of composition and result in a linguistic
r

author as an expression of those inner 'things' ('passions, humours, feelings, impres- artefact-a Roem, play, novel, essay, or other literary work. )'he act of composition is seen
sions', as Barthes puts it) that make up his or her essence, sense of self, subjectivity, as a ~ayo( representing in language an original, pre-\inguistic work, an idea of a work
or soul. 1 that is constituted in-and.as-the author's consciousness. 1
The idea that the literary work is fundamentally-indeed, exclusively-expressive of In his classic study of the theory of Romantic poetics, The Mirror and the Lamp (1953),
the author may be said to have reached its apotheosis in the late eighteenth and early M. H. Abrams argues that during the eighteenth century the dominant model of literary
nineteenth centuries-in the period now commonly characterized by the term 'Roman- creation was fundamentally transformed, from that of a mirror held up to nature to that
ticism'. In this chapter, we will examine some of the ways in which the expressive author of a lamp that emits light from a singular origin or source. Abrams uses the metaphor of
came to prominence in th at period, a period of the most energetic theorizing about the lamp to describe the way in which Romanticism figures poetry as 'the overflow,
th
literature and literary creation. The expressive theory of authorship may be said to utterance or projection of the thought and feelings of the poet'• In the expressive eory
account for, everyt~ing t~at is commonly or conventionally taken to be implied by the of'literafy icoinposition, Abrams•argues, the work of literature is no lo~ger conceived as
th
idea of the auth or of a literary text, and in fact for much that is commonly or conven- sirhply the representation of-mi.tu're: instead, what is presented is as much a view of the
st t
tionally u nd er ood by ".'7°rd 'literature' itself. Indeed, like Barthes's essay, many of pdet'S 'oWn' i'nteribr' his ·or her mind or heart. 3 Influenced in patt' at leaS tiywhat e
the debates in literary cnt1c1sm and theory of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries German philosoph~r Immanuel Kant himself described·as his 'Copernican revolution' in
d to just such a model of authorsh·1 B . . . th1Hheory' of lcnowledge (epistemology), writers and philosophers in Britain and Ger-
respon . P· ut m doing so1 contemporary critiosm th th
ry tend to overlook its complex·r 1 ies a nd contradictions while still prolonging its many iin''pari:icular were concerned to place the authorial subject at e centre of e
and t h eo
•

life. literary universe. While the dominant theory of knowledge for much of the eight~e~th
century 'was the English philosopher John Locke's theory that human knowledge anses
 JIii
52 I Concepts of criticism am:J ·aesthetic of!gins Expressivity I 53
nature and feeling', the modem or 'sentimental' (or 'romanti.c') p~et'. by_co~trast'. 'reflects originates in a fconception', in a mental representation, that precedes the text, that
upon the impression that objects make upon him'. For Schiller, it is only m this alien- precedes the poem.
. . t, the· modem or Romantic poet is con t· .In ihis Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth presents· a similarly conflicted and
ated mediated act·of ,reflect10n that poetry or . s 1-
tute~. 6 In this sense, at least in its formulation wi th in th e· Romantic- tradition, the equally famous account of the act of composition. As we have seen,-Wordsworth declares
. h f t • ore complex more divided and unstable than Barthes's that 'ail good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'. This well-known
expressive t eory o poe ry 1s m ' . ., .. ,. . . . .
attack on it might .suggest. .The Romantic-expressive theory of . authorship, Indeed; declaration is also somewhat surprising, not least on account of the provocative use of
contains within itself its own refutation. If Romanticism figures th e'au th0 r as expressing the word 'is'. Although he is careful to do so elsewhere in the Preface, at this point
his own ideas, thoughts, volitions, that is to say, -it also figures the literary work as being Wordsworth refuses to define poetry in terms of generic constraints, formal or metrical
involved in, or indeed as constituting, an alienated reflection on 'itself,, and ·at the same conventions, or even in terms of language, of the use of certain kinds of words, gram-
time as transcending those originating ideas and volitions. Indeed, as-thismighl: suggest, matical structures, or rhetorical forms. Instead, he defines poetry in terms of its produc-
the poem necessarily goes beyond the self of the author, beyond the subject who' writes, tiqn, -~n.s~r~~ of t;he method of its composition, intimately linking the poem with its
the originator of the poem-a subject who is now irretrievably split, divided 'frorn him or concepµpn,,wit~ the original experience of the poet. Poetry for Wordsworth is not so
herself. •As another German critic, A, W. Schlegel comments; the word 'expression' ~uch a rep~esenta,tion of eyents or objects.in the world as a representation of the poet's
(Ausdruck) is appropriate in a description of literary creation precisely because of its mincl. in., the ad; o~creation: poetry is a certain experience of the poet, a certain way of
assertion that 'the inner is pressed out as though by a force alien to us'.7 , 'fe; ling;~,,\Xord,sworth's famous declaration, then, is a radical and uncompromising
One of the central topics of Romantic poetics, as well as •a common theme of the ~rticulation .of the expressive theory of poetry. The act of composition involves feelings
poetry, is the process of composition itself. And nowhere are the •d:mtradictions embed- bei~g, P,ress~d out spontaneously from the interior-from the very essence or .soul-of
'.J .\·\

ded within the expressive theory of authorship more ev_ident: Indeed, it may be no th~J -~ho experie_nces them. And it is just this very act of composition that is,
exaggeration to say that Romantic poetry and poetics are -energized precisely by- the its~lf, 1po~!ry. Just as ~h~lley argues that the poem itself is a degraded copy of an original
paradoxical nature of their conception of composition. In •his densely-argued and pro- b4t in!1_cces~ible emotion or .experience, Wordsworth too insists on the supplementary
0

vocative account-of authorship, 'A Deftnce of Poetry', Percy Bysshe,Shelley meditates on nature_~f th~. poetic t eJet. For both_writers, the poem as it is written is a degraded
the relationship between the author and his age; developing the Classical (in particular supplement ~9 an original experience.
the Platonic) notion of composition as intimately linked to inspiration. For Shelley, the The point is emphasized and complicated when Wordsworth returns to the question of
very act of composition entails the paradox that expression originates both from within poetic JP,?IJ-~a!}eity sever11l pages further on in the Preface:
the subject who writes and from outside. 'Poetry', he declares. in a iwell-known passage I have-said iliat poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from
describing the moment of literary creation, 'is not like reasoning, a power to ·be exerted emotion recollected,in,tranquillity. The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
according to the determination of the will'. trapquilli_ty gradually disappears, _and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of
contemP,l,atio!l 1is grac.t_~~lly produced, and does itself actuil,lly, exist in the mind. In this mood
[Flor
. the mind in creation is as a fad•mg coal wh" .
1ch some mvisible · · like, an inconstant
influence, · ·
wmd, awakens to transitory bright Th. ,. , , . successful compo~ition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on. 9
. ness. 1s power anses from within, like the colour of a flower j ••. , ' •

which fades and changes as it is d I d

. ·th f. eve ope , and the conscious portions of our natures are unproph• Wordsworth. ·suggests that while the 'overflow of powerful feelings' that constitutes
et1c e1 er o its approach or its de a ..
decline and the m t . P rture · · · when composition begins, inspiration ls already on the poetry is ,' spontaneous') it is•also; and at the same time, not spontaneous. The ,emotion
' os g1onous poetry th t h
feeble shadow of the . . al . a as ever been communicated to the world is probably a is 'recollected' and 'contemplated', rather than immediately acted upon or written
ongm conception of the poet.s
about. The 'origin' of poetry, therefore, is at one remoye from the 'emotion' that the
The act of composition in th· . . .
and exterior to th t '. Is tellmg passage, Is both located in the 'inind' of the poet poet subsequently experiences and puts into ~ords. ·But,. in order to minimize this
a mmd. Indeed the . .
obscured within Shell , h" ' very 1ocat10n of the 'power' of inspiration 1s ~iscrepancy, Wordsworth goes on to suggest that in fact the-poetic act of contemplation
ey s ighly wrought ct· , itself produces an emotion. This emotion is both 'kindred' to the original and 'actually
about the act of expres . wor mg, suggesting a •profound am6ivalence
swn. 0 n the one ha d · • ,.
coming from outside O th n , Inspiration is 'like an inconstant wind ; :xist [s] in the mind'. In other words; the emotion produced in the act of contemplation
. · n e other hand it , • ,. th a copy and itself original.' In his complex, guarded, and finally contradictory
mmd as colour does fl ' anses from within' affecting the poets IS bo
. a ower. The role of th , . , .
creation 1s similarly riven Th , . e poets conso10usness in theJact of poetic analysis, then, Wordsworth seeks to explain poetry in terms of the author's experience or
· · e consc10us •p f emotion and ·· h ·
ignorant of the 'approach' 'd or ions of our nature', Shelley suggests,· are b as a supplement to, or copy of, that experience or emotion. T e poem 1s
, or eparture' of · . • 0th
work ls a feeble shadow of th . mspiration. But at the same,time\"'the poetic a spontaneous overflow and the result of tranquil contemplation. And its origin,
e or1gmaJ conce f
P ion of the poet', suggesting that the poem
56 I Concepts of criticism and aesthetic origins Expressivity I 57
heavily indebted here to more than a century of aesthetic speculation-dissolving, th
asse rtion of the. centrality
. Wh tof . e genius and an insistence on his marginality to his own
diffusing, dissipating the work of German philosophers ,such as Kant and Schiller and wewof creativity. , a , is expressed, according to the Romantic-expressive theory of
British writers on aesthetics such as Alexander Gerard and Edward Young in order to P~ , . slL'ipi'is
author u , 't he'authot; but is also beyond the author·
synthesize them in his own inimitable way: Inasmuch as Bart~es's decla~ation of the death of the author may be said to be directed
The imagination then J consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagin~tion I hold to agau•,..,st the Romantic-expressive model of authorship, we might conclude' it is misdir-
be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind ected. What Barthes's attack o~erlooks or ~isrepresents are precisely the complexities and
of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary imagination I consider as an echo of If-contradictions that energize Romantic poetic theory. The expressive theory of the
the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet stlll as identical with the primary in the kind of its se , ,. 'd' b' 't fth R
authot •as articulate Y wn ers . e omantic period interrogates the subjectivity and
agency, and differing only in degree,_and in the mode of its operation. I,t dissolves, diffuses, dissipates,
in order to recreate; or, where this process is rendered impossible, y~t still at all evel)tS it struggles to selJ,-C;Of J cio~.~n r ss o~~?e.author;_it interrogates ~roblems of language, representation, and
idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are .~ssentially fixed and i~ tultlity; it interrogates questions of authonal intention, volition, and agency. Aud
dead. despite.ithe importance of th~ provocation ~f his essay, it is, in a sense, Barthes himself
who closes down these queSti ons by promoting a reductive version of expressive author-
By contrast, Coleridge suggests, 'fancy' is a form of memory, a select~on by the writer of
shiP, i~ Of~~r to:~rgu~-~gainst it, . and indeed to argue f~r notion of the author that is
previously experienced perceptions that are •mechanically combined by means of the
already at wo~k. m the. Romantic theory of authorship itself. But, at the same time,
association of ideas: the fancy has 'no other counters to play with, but fixities and
Barthes's'essay, and the post-structuralist rethinking of notions of authorship, intention-
definites'. There has been an extraordinary amount of discussion of Coleridge's defin-
ality, arid agency that it inay be said to stand for, have been instrumental in a rethinking of
ition of imagination since the publication of Biographia Literaria almost two centuries
the ,Romantic, ,c<;m ception of authorship and expression. Or, to put it differently, the
ago. The definition is allusive, obscure, paradoxical, and ,fragmentary. What is clear,
imp!)rtance and influence of Barthes's essay may be seen as an indicator of the importance
however, is that Coleridge is suggesting that perception itself is a form of imagination
and influence of the Romantic-expressive theory of authorship in contemporary criticism
in its 'primary' or foundational sense (itself a reflection or 'repetition' of God's powers of
and theory. Partial and polemical though it is, Barthes's essay offers profound insight into
creation), and that a secondary form of imagination involves the work of artistic creation
the fundamental values that Romanticism both avows and contests, values that are still
as it acts on perception. Coleridge valorizes the 'organic' and 'vital', power of imagin- avowed arid still contested 1in contemporary criticism and theory.
ation, figuring it even as a version of the creativity of God.
As with almost everything that is said about creativity· and the aut~or, within the
context of the Romantic-expressive theory of authorship, Coleridge's notion of the FURTHER READING
imagination is divided in its representation of the role and importance of volition.
Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford
Coleridge insists on the importance of the agency of the author, declaring, in a highly University Press, 1953). The standard account of the move from Classicism to Romanticism in
ambiguous phrase, that the 'secondary imagination' 'coexist[s] with the conscious will'. literary theory. Still a basic starting-point for the study of ideas of authorship in the period and for
Coleridge returns to the point in a later chapter of Biographia Literaria, when he considers an understanding of later critiques of the Romantic author.
the 'genius' of Shakespeare. He declares that Shakespeare is 'no mere child of nature', Benichou, Paul, The Consecration of the Writer, 175~1830, trans. Mark K. Jensen (Lincoln, Nebr.:
that he is 'no automaton of genius' and 'no passive vehicle of inspiration', in a declar- University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Focusing on French literary culture of the period, this book,
t
ation that also raises the spectre of the possibility that Shakespeare is indeed an automa- firS published In French in 1973, is a classic account of the 'sacralization' of the writer.
ton (since that spectre needs to be denied) and of the possibility, that the power of the Bennett, Andrew, The Author (London: Routledge, 2005). An introduction to changing conceptions
th
gen ius goes beyond the power of the individual who suffers, thinks, and writes. Shake- of e author and authorship, and to their significance In recent critical and theoretical discourse.
speare, explains Coleridge, 'first studied patiently, meditated deeply, . understood mi- Clark, Timothy, The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post_
~omantic Writing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). An important poSt-structural-
nutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive wedded itself to his habitual
1st analysis of the role of inspiration and its centrality for a certain rethinking of poetics from the
feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous , power, by which he st a nd s Romantic period onwards.
1°
alone', Coleridge \mplies that Shakespeare is not Shakespeare inasmuch as the 'know- Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe and Nancy Jean-Luc The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature In
ledge' th at allows him to write his plays is learnt, external, alien. Instead, this knowledge Ge ' ' ' ·
i rman Romanticism, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany, NY: State University of New
mu st be internalized, must become 'habitual' and 'intuitive', in which case it is no longer ork Press, 1988). First published In 1978 this is an Important study of Romanticism as It was
medi ated, no longer even, in a sense, understood. The point is that the Romantic theory conceived and practised In the Jena Circl~ centred on the Schlegel brothers' journal the A then-
aeum•' an In fl uential
•
book for post-structuralist engagements with Romanticism and authorshlp ·
of auth0 rshl p and th e ac ts of Imaginatio n by which it ls defined involve both an