Poetry in England Poetry was in the air during the Elizabethan age Then all literary forms thrived The public was well informed The hiatus that was Puritan Interregnum Broke the link between poetry and people Poetry catered to the patricians then Till Blake restored the connection Wordsworth solemnly resolved to Write for the masses It was the Age of popular ballads Lyrics and Sonnets. The heroic couplet gave way to Run on lines and blank verse Nature was celebrated as never before Passion again gained currency Polite speech was replaced by rugged rhythms Inane phrases passed away Robustness and health returned Democratic sensibility took over Universal brotherhood declared Poetry was anointed The poet was the harbinger of better times He was the unacknowledged legislator of the world The inner workings of the mind were laid bare The psychological incisiveness returned Children were glorified Even inanimate nature got its due recognition The Romantic Revival is the Renaissance of the Renaissance When Victorian Fiction gained ascendancy Poetry became banal It was maudlin sentimentality Description of nature for its own sake Of morals for their own sake Jingoism took hold Only Hopkins escaped the fate Sociological scrutiny in the form of novels Became the genre of the age Criticism was the vogue Matthew Arnold led the movement To instill in the readers A sense of the past Which Eliot persisted with Culture became the focal point Naturally poetry suffered As mass production of books soared As literacy reached new levesl Leveling down happened Mediocrity had triumphed Popular taste has always been a bane Mass civilization has its Concomitant minority culture A dream world of escape perfectly complemented A crassly philistine real world Swinburnes and Rossettis thrived Pater with his Aestheticism And Art for Arts Sake Became the ruling god Any live contact with the mundane was abjured This trend continued Tell the early decades of the next century The gulf was never bridged The artist stood alienated from society Joyce in fiction Eliot in Poesy Epitomized modernism A suitable style and idiom was fabricated Images again became fresh and original As electronic media took over Poetry again has suffered a setback But small coteries keep it alive. Poetry shall survive the onslaughts of time.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 09:08:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015