augustans and romantics

Sarah Law Poetic Forms and Genres

POETIC FORMS

& GENRESAugustan and

Romantic Poetry


1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period1660-1700 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


AUGUSTAN POETRY Originally applied to the time of the Latin

poets Virgin Horace and Ovid writing during the reign of Roman emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14)

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

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

Sometimes used to indicate the entire Neoclassical period


NEOCLASSICAL POETRY Reacted against what was seen as the

stylistic indiscipline and excessive invention of the Renaissance poets

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

Translation and 'Imitation' of Classical poets Distrust of innovation Emphasis on 'rules' Decorum: genre, characters and style should

all match


FROM POPE'S ESSAY ON CRITICISM (1709)

‘Expression is the Dress of Thought, and stillAppears 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’


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)


POETIC FORM Dominant poetic form of the Augustan period

was the heroic couplet A two-line unit of verse; iambic pentameter

rhyming aa bb cc … Grouped into verse paragraphs 'closed' when the second line is end-stopped:

the sense and grammar of the line comes to a close there

The closed heroic couplet was very common in Augustan poetry


‘'Tis hard 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)


Often the first line of a couplet was end-stopped as well as the second

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

Structures allowing for balance, antithesis and comparison

Help to reinforce the way of thinking being outlined in the poetry. Clear, intellectual style, though can be used for satire too.


FROM POPE'S THE 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 highIn glittering dust and painted fragments lie.[zeugma: one verb used for two or more objects

or subjects]


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; […]’


AUGUSTAN AND OTHER POETS

Pope was the dominant poet of the periodFurther Augustan poets include John Gay and

Jonathan SwiftOther 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)


ROMANTIC FORMS AND GENRESThe Oxford 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.


'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)


THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONAmerican 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)


ROLE OF IMAGINATION

'What Nature gave me at my birthMy Shaping spirit of Imagination'(Coleridge: Dejection, an Ode, 1802)


FROM COLERIDGE: BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA (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.


...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.


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…


FROM WORDSWORTH, THE PRELUDE

‘As one who hangs down-bending from the side Of a slow-moving Boat, upon the breastOf a still water, solacing himselfWith 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 partThe shadow from the substance, rocks and sky’


‘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...’


ROMANTIC FORM

The Romantic poets emphasised organic form, rather than the rigid 'containers' of Neoclassical form

They used a variety of formsThey revived neglected forms such as the

ballad and the sonnetThey experimented with and developed these

revived forms


ROMANTIC FORMThe 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 ImmortalityColeridge: Dejection: An OdeKeats: Ode to a NightingaleShelley: Ode to the West Wind


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 patternIrregular ode: stanzas of different lengthsRomantic Odes usually made up of a mixture

of description and meditationOften of a three part structure:


ROMANTIC ODE1 description of a particular outer scene in

nature2 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.


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]


‘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]


‘…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]


...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]


o The Romantic period is seen today as a crucial time in history. It embodies many of the conflicts and ideological debates which are still at the heart of the modern world.

o 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.

o We still live in a world that has been decisively shaped by this period even if we don’t know this consciously.

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