Eighteenth Century English Poetry

1. Eighteenth Century English Poetry Introduction Neoclassical Poetry-Alexander Pope Sentimentalist Poetry-Thomas Gray Romantic Poetry- Robert Burns & William Blake

2. Introduction In the early 18th century, neoclassical poetry was in its full swing and Alexander Pope was the most prominent poet. In the middle of the 18th century, however, sentimentalism made its appearance. Thomas Gray established his reputation as the spokesman of Graveyard School.

4. Alexander Pope Alexander Pope was born in 1688, the very year of the Glorious Revolution. He was weak and deformed. His father was a Roman Catholic merchant. He got little school education. He taught himself by reading and translating Latin, French Italian and Greek poets with the aids of grammar and dictionaries.

7. Pope�s Major Works & Translations An Essay On Criticism, 1711 The Rape Of The Lock, 1712-14 Dunciad, 1728 - Widened in 1742 An Essay On Man, 1733-34 Translations: Homer's Iliad, 1715-20 Homer's Odyssey, 1726

8. An Essay on Criticism It is a didactic poem in heroic couplet. It consists of 714 lines. It sums up the art of poetry from the ancients such as Aristotle, Horace and Boileau to the eighteenth century European classicists. Pope laments the dearth (??)of true taste in poetic criticism of his own day and calls upon people to turn to the Greek and Roman writers for guidance.

10. Brief Comments Pope was the greatest poet in the early 18th century England. He advocated neoclassicism and emphasized order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum. He worked painstakingly on his poems, developed a satiric, concise, smooth, graceful and well-balanced style and made best use of the heroic couplet.

12. Thomas Gray Thomas Gray was born in London into a broker�s family. He got very good school education, first at Eton and then at Cambridge. He left Cambridge without taking a degree.

14. Comments on Gray Gray�s literary output was small. He wrote slowly and carefully. His poems are characterized by an exquisite sense of form. His masterpiece Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard once and for all established his fame as the leader of sentimentalist poetry and the spokesman of the Graveyard School.

18. Classification of his poems Lyrics of Love and Friendship Burns� fame is established on his lyrics on love and friendship. His best known lyrics of this category include A Red,Red Rose, John Anderson, My Jo and A Fond Kiss, of which A Red, Red Rose is the most popular among Chinese students of English.

19. Patriotic Poems Burns wrote some patriotic poems, in which he expresses his deep love for his motherland. The best-known piece is My Heart is in the Highlands.

20. Scottish Ballads Burns wrote some ballads on the basis of old Scottish legends. He expressed his love for freedom and sang of the heroic spirit of the Scottish people. The best-known poem is A Man�s A Man for A�That.

21. Comments Burns was nurtured by the Scottish cultural tradition. The majority of his poems were written in the Scottish dialect. According to G. Leech (1969:9), Burns is the only greatest English poet who writes outside the standard/London dialect. In the history of English literature since the Middle Ages, only one poet of unquestioned greatness, Robert Burns, has chosen to write his best work outside the standard dialect

22. Comments 2 Burns�s reputation lies chiefly in his love poems and songs. They express tender feelings that came from the bottom of his heart, which can be best illustrated by A Red, Red Rose and Auld Lang Syne.

23. William Blake Blake was into a hosier�s (a handicraftsman) family in London. He showed a precocious talent for painting. He was sent to a drawing school and was later apprenticed to an engraver. In 1779, he began his career as an engraver, drawing book illustrations and making engravings for other painters� pictures.

24. Blake (2) Throughout his life, Blake served as both a poet and an engraver. He live in solitude and poverty. He never tried to adapt himself to worldly affairs. He was a rebel all his life. He cherished great enthusiasm for the French Revolution, which advocated equality, liberty and fraternity.

25. Blake (3) He severely criticized the society of his time and had controversy with modern science, especially the theory of Issac Newton. Literarily he was a Romantic poet, treasuring individual�s imagination while opposing the neoclassical rule of reason.

26. His Major Works Poetical Sketches Collection of youthful poems, the keynote of which is joy, laughter, love and harmony. Songs of Innocence A lovely volume of poems presenting a happy and innocent world. Songs of Experience Marriage of Heaven and Hell

27. Songs of Experience It presents a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone. England becomes �a land of poverty fed with cold and usurous hand� (Holy Thursday) and London is chartered by the rich and the metropolis is blighted with plagues with the �youthful harlot�s curse� (London). The tame Lamb becomes the dreadful Tyger.

28. Marriage of Heaven and Hell The poem is written at the climax of French Revolution. It explores the relationship of the contraries. According to Blake, life is a combination of opposites, of good and evil, of innocence and experience, of body and soul. The word �marriage� means the reconciliation of the contraries, not the subordination of one side to the other.

29. Comments Blake is an imaginative poet. His world is a world of imagination and vision. From childhood he has a visual mind (???,????????). He can see whatever he imagines. He claims that he can see a tree full of angels and the ancient kings in Westminster Abbey. His poetry is full of imagination.

30. Comment 2 Blake writes his poems in plain and direct language. Symbolism is a distinctive feature of his poetry. Blake paves the way for the English Romanticism in early 19th century.