PART 1

教师导入该部分话题

“Poetry,” says Percy Bysshe Shelley, “is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”

Wordsworth declares poetry to be "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.” He also thinks that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Coleridge makes poetry “the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thought, human passions, emotions, language.”

Q:

1.What is poetry to those great poets according to their remarks on poetry?

2.What is poetry to you?

A (Students’ answers might be): human minds/ thoughts/ emotions…

Your answers are fine; yet they just serve as a figure, denoting the themes and ignoring other factors.

Let us turn to the dictionary, and see how the matter looks to the cold-minded definer. Webster gives Poetry as "the art of apprehending and interpreting ideas by the faculty of the imagination; the art of idealizing in thought and in expression;" and then, specifically, "imaginative language or composition, whether expressed rhythmically or in prose." This seems to come nearer the mark; although, by admitting poetical prose, the popular idea of poetry is expanded to include all writing that is infused with the imaginative quality. From the definition given by the Webster, poetry could be something more than human emotions.