Poetic diction: A study of 18th century verse

Poetic diction: A study of eighteenth century verse

The studies on which this book is based were begun during my tenure of the William Noble Fellowship in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, and I wish to thank the members of the Fellowship Committee, and especially Professor Elton, under whom I had for two years the great privilege of working, for much valuable advice and criticism. I must also express my sincere obligation to the University for a generous grant towards the cost of publication. [1] From the time of the publication of the first Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) the poetical language of the eighteenth century, or rather of the so-called classical writers of the period, has been more or less under a cloud of suspicion. The condemnation which Wordsworth then passed upon it, and even the more rational and penetrating criticism which Coleridge later brought to his own analysis of the whole question of the language fit and proper for poetry, undoubtedly led in the course of the nineteenth century to a definite but uncritical tendency to disparage and underrate the entire poetic output of the period, not only of the Popian supremacy, but even of the interregnum, when the old order was slowly making way for the new. The Romantic rebels of course have nearly always received their meed of praise, but even in their case there is not seldom a suspicion of critical reservation, a sort of implied reproach that they ought to have done better than they did, and that they could and might have done so if they had reacted more violently against the poetic atmosphere of their age. In brief, what with the Preface to the[2] Lyrical Ballads and its successive expansions at the beginning of the century, and what, some eighty years later, with Matthew Arnolds calm description of the eighteenth century as an age of prose and reason, the poetry of that period, and not only the neo-classical portion of it, fared somewhat badly. There could be no better illustration of the influence and danger of labels and tags; poetic diction, and age of prose and reason tended to become a sort of critical legend or tradition, by means of which eighteenth century verse, alike at its highest and its lowest levels, could be safely and adequately understood and explained. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68420
Author: Quayle, Thomas
Release Date: Jun 28, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publication Date: 1924
Publisher Country: United Kingdom