|
NEOCLASSIC
|
ROMANTIC
|
Quality of poetry
|
 decorum,
concision, restraint, balance, reason, regularity, wit
|
 emotion,
introspection, passion, sublimity, beauty, spontaneity, irregularity,
picturesque
|
Subjects
|
public and
political concerns, social responsibility, manners & morals; "The proper
study of mankind is Man" (Pope)
natural world serves as an image
of or analogy for human concerns
deals with polite, urbane
society, upper and middle classes; the natural world serves as an image
of or analogy for human concerns
|
humankind generally, nature & the soul, spiritual identity; a-political
(or radical)
human value, perception and
wholeness, often evoked through and deeply connected to the natural world
inclusion of the elderly,
women, children, the rural and the unlettered
|
Values
|
absolute,
public, rational, humanist
|
private,
spiritual, universal through Spirit in nature and in humankind
|
The poet
|
urbane,
witty, gentlemanly, moral, incisive; good sense, good humour, learning,
social concern, capable of moral outrage
|
solitary,
reflective, inspired; a person of imagination and acute sensibility,
sometimes visionary
|
Setting
|
urban; the
rural is seen either as pastoral (idealized) or as ignorant and
unmannerly
|
rural, the
countryside; the city is seen as the locus of corruption, greed and
power
|
Allusion and history
|
Classical
Greece and, especially, Augustan Rome, also the Bible
|
the mythic,
the mediaeval, the gothic, irrational, remote
|
Language
|
"Language
is the dress of thought" (Pope); attention to decorum, propriety,
allusion
|
language has
creative power; attention to the evocative, moving, beautiful
|
Genres
|
satire,
epistle, epic (teaching, ideas, critique of public values), ode (public)
and epigrams
|
lyric, ode
(enthusiasm, union with nature, inspiration, emotion, meditation)
|
Idea of 'Nature'
|
(Most
qualities of poetry and senses of what constitutes moral life follow upon
the age's understanding of Nature.)
Nature is the 'order of
things', the "clear, unchanged and universal light" (Pope); it is marked
by harmony, rationality and order, expressed descriptively and
emotionally as well as intellectually. The 'real' world as we experience
and understand it models a divinely sanctioned, hierarchical order.
Poetry is public, ordered, intellectual; it values right reason,
teaching, civic concern.
|
'Nature'
refers firstly to the external world in its beauty and power, and then as
that nature is an expression of the power of Being which flows through
and unites all things, including humankind. This force is creative and
moral, and is embodied in humans in the Imagination -- as opposed to the
Reason in the neo-classical view. Therefore poetry is marked by emotion,
beauty, inspiration, feeling, mystery. Its sense of the moral is the
fully experiencing, passionate person, in harmony with the natural world
and the higher forces -- as opposed to the civic order and right reason
of the neoclassical sense of the moral.
|
Key texts
|
Ben Jonson, "To Penshurst"
Alexander Pope, "Essay on Criticism"
|
William Wordsworth, "Preface to
The Lyrical Ballads", "Tintern Abbey" |
