English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism

494 Pages·1975·43.8 MB·English

by  M. H. Abrams

ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS
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English
Romantic Poets
MODERN ESSAYS IN CRITICISM
SECOND EDITION
Edited by M. H. ABRAMS
Cornell University
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON OXFORD NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford London Glasgow
New York Toronto Melbourne Wellington
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Kuala Lumpur Singapore . Jakarta Hong Kong Toky
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Copyright © 1975 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 75-4205
First published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1975
First published as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1975
Printed in the United States of America
printing, last digit: 20 19 18 17 16 15 14
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THIS BOOK brings together essays written during the last fifty years on
the major English poets of the Romantic Age. Three of the essays are
general; others focus upon individual writers or particular works. With
the exception of A. O. Lovejoy's classic "Discrimination of Romanti-
cisms," the emphasis is critical; those of the included writings which
deal with literary history or with the life and ideas of a poet bring
these materials to bear on the matter and mode of his poetry and on
the interpretation and assessment of particular poems.
A new edition of this book provides the chance to leave out various
essays which have been to some degree superseded and to add many
others which represent current critical and scholarly developments.
When the collection was put together in 1960 it included a number of
essays, written in opposition to each other, which were part of the
great debate about the Romantic achievement that began in the 1920's
and 1930's. In the last two decades or so, that debate has largely been
resolved in favor of the Romantic poets, to the extent that it has be-
come common to claim that modem writers, who were earlier praised
on the grounds that they were anti-Romantic, are in fact latter-day
exemplars of Romantic innovations. Among the essays retained from
the first edition, however, are several which represent the debate,
since they are valuable in themselves and also serve as a prime index
to the drastic shifts in sensibility and poetic standards during the gen-
eration or so just past. Items which have been added in the present
edition are indicated in the Contents by an asterisk.
The original and added critiques cover the major poems by each of
the major poets and also, taken together, represent the chief modern
alignments in dealing with poetry—old criticism and new criticism,
discursive and explicative, mimetic and rhetorical, literal and mythical,
archetypal and phenomenological, pro and con. Within this spectrum,
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
each contribution was chosen as a distinguished instance of its point
of view.
The many scholars who have generously responded to my requests
for counsel know the pain it cost to omit essays that demand admission
by every criterion except the availability of space. But nature, Imlac
observed,, "sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left. ... Of the
blessings set before you, make your choice and be content."
M.' H. ABRAMS
Ithaca, New York
November 1974
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CONTENTS
The Romantic Period
ARTHUR o. LOVEJOY On the Discrimination of Romanticisms 3
w. k. WiMSATT The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery 25
M. H. ABRAMS The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantic Metaphor 37
Blake
NORTHROP FRYE* Blake's Treatment of the Archetype 55
DAVID v. ERDMAN* Blake: The Historical Approach 72
ROBERT F, GLECKNER Point of View and Context in Blake's Songs 90
HAROLD BLOOM* Blake's Apocalypse: "Jerusalem'' 98
Wordsworth
BASIL WILLEY On Wordsworth and the Locke Tradition 112
GEOFFREY H. HARTMAN* Nature and the Humanization of the Self in
Wordsworth 123
PAUL D. SHEATS* The 'Lyrical Ballads' 133
LIONEL TRILLING The Immortality Ode 149
JONATHAN WORDSWORTH* Wordsworth's 'Borderers' 170
Coleridge
G. M. HARPER Coleridge's Conversation Poems 188
G. w. KNIGHT Coleridge's Divine Comedy 202
HUMPHRY HOUSE The Ancient Mariner 214
REEVE PARKER* To William Wordsworth": Coleridge and the Art of
Analogy 240
* Essays added to this edition.
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CONTENTS
Byron
T. S. ELIOT Byron 261
w. w. ROBSON* Byron and Sincerity 275
HELEN GARDNER* Don Juan 303
GEORGE M. RIDENOUR* 'Don Juan': The English Cantos 313
Shelley
c, s. LEWIS Shelley, Dryden, and Mr. Eliot 324
F. R. LEAVIS Shelley 345
FREDERICK A. POTTLE The Case of Shelley 366
EARL H. WASSERMAN* 'Prometheus Unbound': The Premises and the
Mythic Mode 384
Keats
w. JACKSON BATE Keats's Style: Evolution toward Qualities of Permanenf
Value 411
CLEANTH BROOKS Keats's Sylvan Historian 425
RICHARD H. FOGLE A Note on 'Ode to a Nightingale" 436
ARNOLD DAVENPORT* A Note on "To Autumn" 441
JACK STILLINGER* The Hoodwinking of Madeline: Skepticism in
'The Eve of St. Agnes' 448
STUART M. SPERRY* Tragic Irony in "The Fall of Hyperion' 470
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ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS