Introduction to two important periods of literary history with comments on poetry and poetic examples

1. Poetic forms & genres Augustan and Romantic Poetry Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

2. 1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period 1660-1700 The Restoration 1700-1745 The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope) 1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson) 1785-1830 The Romantic Period Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

4. Then to the literary period in England c. 1700-1745

5. Major authors e.g. Pope and Swift imitated the style of the Roman poets.

6. Sometimes used to indicate the entire Neoclassical periodSarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

8. Wanted to restore the restraint, simplicity and impersonality of Classical Poetry

9. Translation and 'Imitation' of Classical poets

10. Distrust of innovation

11. Emphasis on 'rules'

12. Decorum: genre, characters and style should all matchSarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

13. From Pope's Essay on Criticism (1709) ‘Expression is the Dress of Thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile Conceit in pompous Words exprest, Is like a Clown in regal Purple drest; For diff'rent Styles with diff'rent Subject sort, As several Garbs with Country, Town and Court’ Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

14. In much Augustan poetry, poetic language is the 'dress' of thought and metaphor a kind of embellishment or packaging of the thought. ‘True wit is nature to advantage dressed What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest’ (Essay on Criticism) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

16. A two-line unit of verse; iambic pentameter rhyming aa bb cc …

17. Grouped into verse paragraphs

18. 'closed' when the second line is end-stopped: the sense and grammar of the line comes to a close there

19. The closed heroic couplet was very common in Augustan poetrySarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

20. ‘'Tishard to say, if greater Want of Skill Appear in Writing or in Judging ill, But, of the two, less dang'rous is th'Offence, To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense: Some few in that, but Numbers err in this, Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss; A Fool might once himself alone expose, Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose.’ (from Pope's Essay on Criticism 1709) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

22. Many single lines were broken into two halves by a strong caesura

23. Structures allowing for balance, antithesis and comparison

24. Help to reinforce the way of thinking being outlined in the poetry. Clear, intellectual style, though can be used for satire too.Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

25. From Pope'sThe Rape of the Lock (1714) Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th'affighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast, When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last, Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high In glittering dust and painted fragments lie. [zeugma: one verb used for two or more objects or subjects] Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

26. From Pope's Essay on Man (1734) ‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; […]’ Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

27. Augustan and other poets Pope was the dominant poet of the period Further Augustan poets include John Gay and Jonathan Swift Other poets were more concerned with nature and the individual self, anticipating Romanticism: James Thomson (The Seasons 1730) and Edward Yonge (Night Thoughts 1744) Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

28. Romantic Forms and Genres TheOxford Companion to English Literature : ‘In the most abstract terms, Romanticism may be regarded as the triumph of the values of imaginative spontaneity, visionary originality, wonder, and emotional self-expression over the classical standards of balance, order, restraint, proportion and objectivity. Its name derives from romance, the literary form in which desires and dreams prevail over everyday realities.’ Key figures: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats. Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

29. 'The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way.' (from the revised Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth & Coleridge,1802) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

30. The Age of Revolution American Revolution (American War of Independence 1775-83) French Revolution (1789-99) Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution 'The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave' (Shelley from A Defense of Poetry, 1821) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

31. Role of Imagination 'What Nature gave me at my birth My Shaping spirit of Imagination' (Coleridge: Dejection, an Ode, 1802) Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

32. From Coleridge: BiographiaLiteraria (1817) IMAGINATION then I consider either as primary, or Secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

33. ...The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of imagination. Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

34. From Tintern Abbey(Wordsworth, 1798) ...Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear – both what they half create, And what perceive… Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

35. From Wordsworth, The Prelude ‘As one who hangs down-bending from the side Of a slow-moving Boat, upon the breast Of a still water, solacing himself With such discoveries as his eye can make, Beneath him, in the bottom of the deeps, Sees many beauteous sights, weeds, fishes, flowers, Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more, Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky’ Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

36. ‘Mountains and clouds, from that which is indeed The region, and the things which there abide In their true dwelling; now is crossed by gleam Of his own image, by a sunbeam now, And motions that are sent he knows not whence, Impediments that make his task more sweet; -Such pleasant office have we long pursued Incumbent o'er the surface of past time With like success...’ Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

37. Romantic Form The Romantic poets emphasised organic form, rather than the rigid 'containers' of Neoclassical form They used a variety of forms They revived neglected forms such as the ballad and the sonnet They experimented with and developed these revived forms Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

38. Romantic Form The lyric poem became much more central: A relatively short poem uttered by a single first-person speaker, who expresses a state of mind, or a process of perception, thought and feeling Coleridge: Conversation poems; fragments, The Romantic Ode: e.g. Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality Coleridge: Dejection: An Ode Keats: Ode to a Nightingale Shelley: Ode to the West Wind Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

39. The Ode A longish lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and often elaborate in stanzaic structure Regular ode: regular stanza pattern Irregular ode: stanzas of different lengths Romantic Odes usually made up of a mixture of description and meditation Often of a three part structure: Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

40. Romantic Ode 1 description of a particular outer scene in nature 2 extended meditation which the scene inspires, and which may be on a private problem, a universal situation, or both 3 an insight or vision, a resolution or decision, signalling a return to the original scene, but with a new perspective. Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

41. From Wordsworth: ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’ (1798) ‘FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.--Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. [sets the scene] Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

42. ‘But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration… [meditates on his feelings] Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

43. ‘…I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.’ [what he has learned as recompense for lost childhood] Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

44. ...something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. [sense of a divine presence in nature] [then returns to the present situation and his sister Dorothy] Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

45. Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

47. It was a time when ideas about societies were breaking down and being redefined, and radicalism and tradition, change and stability, nature and humanity were major themes.

48. We still live in a world that has been decisively shaped by this period even if we don’t know this consciously.Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres