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Second half of the 18th century: Poetry in Transition

Second half of the 18th century: Poetry in Transition. History. 1688 – Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution Industrial Revolution and Agrarian Revolution (cf. Goldsmith, Crabbe) 1754-63: war with France Ireland (Catholicism of majority)

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Second half of the 18th century: Poetry in Transition

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  1. Second half of the 18th century:Poetryin Transition

  2. History • 1688 – Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution • Industrial Revolution and Agrarian Revolution (cf. Goldsmith, Crabbe) • 1754-63: war with France • Ireland (Catholicism of majority) • Scotland (1707: Union of Parliaments; Jacobite Rebellions: 1715, 1745) • Scottish Enlightenment – David Hume, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) – idea of sociability • American Revolution (1775) • French Revolution (1789)

  3. Literary production Growth of publishing industry Differentiation of readership Professionalization, incl. women poets Rise of the professional critic Simultaneous trends develop side by side & influence each other

  4. I)The persistence of Augustan idiom: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) • Rambler • Dictionary of the English Language (1755) • Preface to Shakespeare (1765) • Lives of the English Poets (1779–81) Ideal of sociability, conversation – the ‘Club’ (Joshua Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke)

  5. The Vanity of Human Wishes(1749) imitation!Juvenal’s Satire (3rd and esp. 10th) cf. Pope’s Imitations of Horace; Dryden’s translations of Juvenal, etc. concern with history! – recent events assimilated to famous examples of the past

  6. The Vanity of Human Wishes Let observation with extensive view,  Survey mankind, from China to Peru;  Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,  And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;  Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,  O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,  Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride  To tread the dreary paths without a guide,  As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude,  Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good. 

  7. The Vanity of Human Wishes imitation heroic couplet public voice

  8. The Vanity of Human Wishes imitation heroic couplet public voice historical & geographical range (‘Survey!’) comprehensiveness, universality

  9. The Vanity of Human Wishes Let observation with extensive view,  Survey mankind, from China to Peru;  Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,  And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;  Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,  O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,  Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride  To tread the dreary paths without a guide,  As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude,  Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good. 

  10. The Vanity of Human Wishes 5 kinds of wishing: • For political power • For military glory • For scholarly achievement • For longevity • For beauty

  11. The Vanity of Human Wishes Turning point: Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain, WhichHeav’n may hear, nor deem Religion vain (ll. 349–50) Christian resolution (St. Paul; fideism)

  12. The Vanity of Human Wishes when the Sense of sacred Presence fires, And strong Devotion to the Skies aspires, Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d. (ll. 357–60) ‘imitation to end all imitation’? New idea of originality! (cf. Edward Young: Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759)

  13. II) Transformation of the Augustan Idiom Thomas Gray (1716-1771) Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742) Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) Johnson: ‘The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.’

  14. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

  15. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard quatrain (abab) veiled allusions, closer to the vernacular intimacy, subjective voice But also: intertextuality, sense of tradition (Milton, Shakespeare, Virgil’s Georgics, etc.)

  16. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard solitude – the private self (vs public voice) melancholy , isolation of the poet (cf.: ‘graveyard school’) sensibility, sympathy for the ‘common people’ memory (vs history) Tradition of the ‘prospect poem’ transformed

  17. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The problem of memory: ‘short and simple annals of the poor’ ‘Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise’ - discontinuity, disconnectedness

  18. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The problem of the ‘common people’ Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

  19. New features of the poetry of the age New emphasis on originality / genius Loss of public engagement Retreat from the city Aesthetic of the sublime (cf. Burke) The ode (Collins, Cowper, Gray) Turn to the past (Gray, Percy, Macpherson, etc.) Sensibility

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