essay on poetic theory

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Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “ The Poetic Principle ” (reprint), Home Journal , series for 1850, no. 36 (whole number 238), August 31, 1850, p. 1, cols. 1-6

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[page 1, column 1, continued:]

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

———

BY THE LATE EDGAR A. POE.

[F ROM advance sheets of the new volume by Mr. Poe, in the press of Mr. Redfield, we present the following admirable essay embodying the critic's theory of poetry. It appropriately introduces his discussions of the individual merit of many of our prominent authors. This concluding volume of Poe's works, making some six hundred pages, is entitled “ The Literati ,” and will be published in about three weeks.]

   In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity — its totality of effect or impression — we read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical pre-judgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the work, we read it again, omitting the first book — that is to say, commencing with the second — we shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we before condemned — that damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity: — and this is precisely the fact.

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus , the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd — yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size , abstractly considered — there can be nothing in mere bulk , so far as a volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublime — but no man is impressed after this fashion by the material grandeur of even “The Columbiad.” Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet , they have not insisted on our estimating Lamar” tine by the cubic foot, or Pollock [[Pollok]] by the pound — but what else are we to infer from their continual prating about “sustained effort?” If, by “sustained effort,” any little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the effort — if this indeed be a thing commendable — but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. It is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art, rather by the impression it makes — by the effect it produces — than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another — nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By-and-by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Béranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring; but, in general, they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention; and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem — in keeping [column 2:] it out of the popular view — is afforded by the following exquisite little Serenade:

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Has led me — who knows how? —

To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream —

The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,

O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!

I die, I faint, I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast:

Oh! press it close to thine again,

Where it will break at last!

Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines — yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis — the very best, in my opinion, which he has ever written — has, no doubt, through this same defect of undue brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the critical than in the popular view:

The shadows lay along Broadway,

‘Twas near the twilight-tide —

And slowly there a lady fair

Was walking in her pride.

Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,

Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,

And Honor charm'd the air;

And all astir looked kind on her,

And called her good as fair —

For all God ever gave to her

She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare

From lovers warm and true —

For her heart was cold to all but gold,

And the rich came not to woo —

But honor'd well are charms to sell

If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair —

A slight girl, lily-pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail —

‘Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn,

And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray;

For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,

Her woman's heart gave way! —

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven

By man is cursed alway!

In this composition we find it difficult to recognize the Willis who has written so many mere “verses of society.” The lines are not only richly ideal, but full of energy; while they breathe an earnestness — an evident sincerity of sentiment — for which we look in vain throughout all the other works of this author.

While the epic mania — while the idea that, to merit in poetry, prolixity is indispensable — has, for some years past, been gradually dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity — we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic . It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea; and we Bostonians, very especially, have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force: — but the simple fact is, that, would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man, I would nevertheless, limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox, to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth, we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which, in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms: — waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity — her disproportion — her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious — in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind — he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of [column 3:] the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry, —or when by Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods — we find ourselves melted into tears — we weep then — not as the Abbaté Gravina supposes — through excess of pleasure, but through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now , wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes — in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance — very especially in Music — and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the composition position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact . We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages which we do not possess — and Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.

To recapitulate, then: — I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty . Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul , which we recognise as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore — using the word as inclusive of the sublime — I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes: — no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: — but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the Pröem to Mr. Longfellow's “Waif”

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an Eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,

That my soul cannot resist;

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of time [[Time]].

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective. Nothing can be better than —

—————— the bards sublime,

Down the corridors of Time.

The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem, on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This “ease,” or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone — as a point of really difficult attainment. But not so: — a natural manner is difficult only to him who should never meddle with it — to the unnatural. It is but the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone , in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would adopt — and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who, after the fashion of “ The North American Review ,” should be, upon all occasions, merely “quiet,” must necessarily upon many occasions, be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered “easy,” or “natural,” than a Cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the wax-works.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles “June.” I quote only a portion of it: [column 4:]

There, through the long, long summer hours,

The golden light should lie,

And thick young herbs and groups of flowers

Stand in their beauty by.

The oriole should build and tell

His love-tale, close beside my cell;

The idle butterfly

Should rest him there, and there be heard

The housewife-bee and humming bird.

And what, if cheerful shouts at noon,

Come, from the village sent,

Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,

With fairy laughter blent?

And what if, in the evening light,

Betrothed lovers walk in sight

Of my low monument?

I would the lovely scene around

Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know, I know I should not see

The season's glorious show,

Nor would its brightness shine for me,

Nor its wild music flow;

But if, around my place of sleep,

The friends I love should come to weep,

They might not haste to go.

Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom

Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

These to their soften'd hearts should bear

The thought of what has been,

And speak of one who cannot share

The gladness of the scene;

Whose part in all the pomp that fills

The circuit of the summer hills,

Is — that his grave is green;

And deeply would their hearts rejoice

To hear again his living voice.

The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous — nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul — while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

A feeling of sadness and longing

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as the “Health” of Edward Coote Pinkney: —

I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon;

To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given

A form so fair, that, like the air,

’Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,

Like those of morning birds,

And something more than melody

Dwells ever in her words;

The coinage of her heart are they,

And from her lips each flows

As one may see the burden'd bee

Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,

The measures of her hours;

Her feelings have the fragrancy,

The freshness of young flowers;

And lovely passions, changing oft,

So fill her, she appears

The image of themselves by turns, —

The idol of past years!

Of her bright face one glance will trace

A picture on the brain,

And of her voice in echoing hearts

A sound must long remain;

But memory, such as mine of her,

So very much endears,

When death is nigh my latest sigh

Will not be life's but hers.

I fill'd this cup to one made up

The seeming paragon —

Her health! and would on earth there stood,

Some more of such a frame,

That life might be all poetry,

And weariness a name.

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists, by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called “ The North American Review .” The poem just cited is especially beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces, we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered.

It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book: — whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward.

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics — but I am by no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly put , to become self-evident. It is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as such: — and thus, to point out too particularly the merits of a work of Art, is to admit that they are not merits altogether.

Among the “Melodies” of Thomas Moore, is one whose distinguished character as a poem proper, seems to have been singularly left out of view. I allude to his lines beginning — “Come, rest in this bosom.” The intense energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. There are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of Love — a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied in words:

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,

Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;

Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,

And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.

Oh! what was love made for, if ‘tis not the same

Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?

I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,

I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.

Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss,

And thy Angel I’ll be, ‘mid the horrors of this, —

Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,

And shield thee, and save thee, — or perish there too!

It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny Moore Imagination, while granting him Fancy — a distinction originating with Coleridge — than whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore. The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only . But never was there a greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English language I can call to mind no poem more profoundly — more wierdly [[weirdly]] imaginative , in the best sense, than the lines commencing — “I would I were [column 5:] by that dim lake” — which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am unable to remember them.

One of the noblest — and, speaking of Fancy, one of the most singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His “Fair Ines” had always, for me, an inexpressible charm:

O saw ye not fair Ines?

She's gone into the West,

To dazzle when the sun is down,

And rob the world of rest:

She took our daylight with her,

The smiles that we love best,

With morning blushes on her cheek,

And pearls upon her breast.

O, turn again, fair Ines,

Before the fall of night,

For fear the moon should shine alone,

And stars unrivall'd bright;

And blessed will the lover be

That walks beneath their light,

And breathes the love against thy cheek

I dare not even write!

Would I had been, fair Ines,

That gallant cavalier,

Who rode so gaily by thy side,

And whisper'd thee so near!

Were there no bonny dames at home,

Or no true lovers here,

That he should cross the seas to win

The dearest of the dear?

I saw thee, lovely Ines,

Descend along the shore,

With bands of noble gentlemen,

And banners waved before;

And gentle youth and maidens gay,

And snowy plumes they wore;

It would have been a beauteous dream,

— If it had been no more!

Alas, alas, fair Ines,

She went away with song,

With music waiting on her steps,

And shoutings of the throng;

But some were sad and felt no mirth,

But only Music's wrong,

In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell,

To her you’ve loved so long.

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines,

That vessel never bore

So fair a lady on its deck,

Nor danced so light before, —

Alas, for pleasure on the sea,

And sorrow on the shore!

The smile that blest one lover's heart

Has broken many more!

“The Haunted House,” by the same author, is one of the truest poems ever written — one of the truest — one of the most unexceptionable — one of the most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in its execution. It is, moreover, powerfully ideal — imaginative. I regret that its length renders it unsuitable for the purposes of this Lecture. In place of it, permit me to offer the universally appreciated “Bridge of Sighs”: —

One more Unfortunate,

Weary of breath,

Rashly importunate,

Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care; ——

Fashion'd so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments

Clinging like cerements;

Whilst the wave constantly

Drips from her clothing;

Take her up instantly,

Loving, not loathing. —

Touch her not scornfully;

Think of her mournfully,

Gently and humanly;

Not of the stains of her,

All that remains of her

Now is pure womanly.

Make no deep scrutiny

Into her mutiny

Rash and undutiful;

Past all dishonor,

Death has left on her

Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,

One of Eve's family —

Wipe those poor lips of hers

Oozing so clammily.

Loop up her tresses

Escaped from the comb,

Her fair auburn tresses;

Whilst wonderment guesses

Where was her home?

Who was her father?

Who was her mother?

Had she a sister?

Had she a brother?

Or was there a dearer one

Still, and a nearer one

Yet, than all other?

Alas! for the rarity

Of Christian charity

Under the sun!

Oh! it was pitiful!

Near a whole city full,

Home she had none.

Sisterly, brotherly,

Fatherly, motherly,

Feelings had changed:

Love, by harsh evidence,

Thrown from its eminence;

Even God's providence

Seeming estranged.

Where the lamps quiver

So far in the river,

With many a light

From window and casement,

From garret to basement,

She stood, with amazement,

Houseless by night.

The bleak wind of March

Made her tremble and shiver;

But not the dark arch,

Or the black flowing river:

Mad from life's history,

Glad to death's mystery,

Swift to be hurl'd —

Anywhere, anywhere

Out of the world!

In she plunged boldly,

No matter how coldly

The rough river ran, —

Over the brink of it,

Picture it, — think of it,

Dissolute Man!

Lave in it, drink of it

Then, if you can!

Lift her with care;

Ere her limbs frigidly

Stiffen too rigidly,

Decently, — kindly, —

Smooth and compose them;

And her eyes, close them,

Staring so blindly!

Dreadfully staring

Through muddy impurity,

As when with the daring

Last look of despairing

Fixed on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,

Spurred by contumely,

Cold inhumanity,

Burning insanity,

Into her rest, —

Cross her hands humbly,

As if praying dumbly,

Over her breast!

Owning her weakness,

Her evil behavior,

And leaving, with meekness,

Her sins to her Savior!

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The versification, although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is the thesis of the poem.

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron, is one which has never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:

Though the day of my destiny's over,

And the star of my fate hath declined,

Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;

Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never hath found but in thee . [column 6:]

Then when nature around me is smiling,

The last smile which answers to mine,

I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,

As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee .

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,

And its fragments are sunk in the wave,

Though I feel that my soul is delivered

To pain — it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn —

They may torture, but shall not subdue me —

‘Tis of thee that I think — not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,

Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, —

Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,

Though parted, it was not to fly,

Though watchful, ‘twas not to defame me,

Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Nor the war of the many with one —

If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

‘Twas folly not sooner to shun:

And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee,

I have found that whatever it lost me,

It could not deprive me of thee .

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,

Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that which I most cherished

Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,

And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee .

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

From Alfred Tennyson — although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived — I have left myself time to cite only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him the noblest of poets — not because the impressions he produces are, at all times, the most profound — not because the poetical excitement which he induces is, at all times, the most intense — but because it is , at all times, the most ethereal — in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last long poem, “The Princess:”

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart — or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary — Love — the true, the divine Eros — the Uranian, as distinguished from the Dionæan Venus — is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before, we experience, at once, the true poetical effect — but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony manifest.

We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in waving of the grain-fields — in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue distance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silver rivers — in the repose of sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds — in the harp of Æolus — in the sighing of the night-wind — in the repining voice of the forest — in the surf that complains to the shore — in the fresh breath of the woods — in the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in the lustre of her eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments — in her burning enthusiasms — in her gentle charities — in her meek and devotional endurances — but above all — ah, far above all — he kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty — of her love .

Let me conclude — by the recitation of yet another brief poem — one very different in character from any that I have before quoted. It is by Motherwell, and is called “The Song of the Cavalier.” With our modern and altogether rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we must identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul of the old cavalier.

Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all,

And don your helmes amaine:

Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honor, call

Us to the field againe.

No shrewish teares shall fill our eye

When the sword-hilt's in our hand, —

Heart-whole we’ll part, and no whit sighe

For the fayrest of the land;

Let piping swaine, and craven wight,

Thus weepe and puling crye,

Our business is like men to fight.

And hero-like to die!

[S:0 - HJ, 1850] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Essays - The Poetic Principle (reprint)

• © 2010

Wordsworth's Poetic Theory

Knowledge, Language, Experience

• A. Regier ,

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About this book.

• English literature
• literary theory
• Romanticism
• William Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'Regier and Uhlig have assembled a remarkable group of scholars and critics who contribute to an invaluable volume for Romanticists and literary theorists alike.' Ross Wilson, Textual Practice

'The Wordsworthian question of poetry [ ] motivates this exciting and challenging book, and receives from its distinguished contributors a range of compelling answers.' Tom Duggett, Romanticism

'Seldom does a collection of essays display the internal coherence of this intellectually ambitious and well-judged volume. The aspects of Wordsworth's poetic theory and practice addressed by the contributors are theoretically sophisticated and timely. [ ] The exceptional standard of the essays, their dialogic development of a series of closely related themes, and the inherent interest of the subject make the collection vital reading for any student not just of the Romantic period, but of poetic theory in general.' Forum for Modern Language Studies

'A significant and timely crystallization of one of the most exciting developments in recent studies in Romanticism: what might be described as the 'cognitive turn' in Wordswoth studies. [ ] A rich and intellectually invigorating collection [ ] it brings together several generations of significant and emerging Wordsworth scholars, and shows the way forward for an excitingly revitalizes Wordsworth criticism. Simon Swift, BARS Bulletin & Review

About the authors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Wordsworth's Poetic Theory

Book Subtitle : Knowledge, Language, Experience

Editors : A. Regier, S. Uhlig

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan London

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2010

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-230-52544-3 Published: 18 December 2009

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : VII, 220

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• Poe's Short Stories

Edgar Allan Poe

• Literature Notes
• Poe's Critical Theories
• Edgar Allan Poe Biography
• About Poe's Short Stories
• Summary and Analysis
• "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
• "The Purloined Letter"
• "The Tell-Tale Heart"
• "The Black Cat"
• "The Cask of Amontillado"
• "William Wilson"
• "The Pit and the Pendulum"
• "The Masque of the Red Death"
• Critical Essays
• Edgar Allan Poe and Romanticism
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Poe's Critical Theories

Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be America's first significant literary critic or, at least, the first major writer in America to write seriously about criticism, about the theory of composition, and about the principles of creative art. He was also the first to set down a consistent set of principles about what he thought was acceptable in art and what should be essentially rejected in art.

As an editor of a magazine, Poe's views on literary criticism were influenced by the nature of the short works of art that would appeal to the magazine-reading public. But irrespective of his journalistic position, his critical views on the nature of what was and was not acceptable in a work of art have become famous and have had an enormous influence on subsequent writers.

Poe's major theories can be found (1) in the many reviews he wrote analyzing the writings of other authors; in this genre, his most famous review is entitled "Twice-Told Tales," a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories; (2) in the many letters, epistles, and applications he sent for jobs, or as answers he gave as an editor, among the more famous being the one entitled "Letter to B_____"; (3) in the various editorials he wrote for the magazines he was associated with, "Exordium" being one of the best examples of this type; (4) in the official critical articles he wrote, in which he attempted to present in a logical, coherent manner his critical views; as examples, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition" both contain the unified core and basis of Poe's critical theories, and these two essays alone suffice to give one a full understanding of Poe's critical views; (5) and, finally, in the critical principles that can be drawn from Poe's writings themselves, principles which he did not include in his critical dicta (dictums) per se.

Among Poe's greatnesses was his ability as an editor to recognize great literature and to dismiss insignificant works. For example, Poe was the first major, or influential, writer to recognize the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales , Poe says that "Mr. Hawthorne is scarcely recognized by the press or by the public . . . yet . . . he evinces extraordinary genius, having no rival either in America or elsewhere." This critical recognition of Hawthorne, therefore, attests to Poe's keen critical faculties; few critics have made such wholly accurate summations about a writer's talent which subsequent generations of critics have verified.

In Poe's review of Twice-Told Tales and in his two main essays on criticism, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," we have access to Poe's critical statements — stated, restated, emphasized, and applied to his own works ("The Philosophy of Composition," for example, deals in detail with his methodology of composing his most famous poem, "The Raven"), and not only does he apply his own principles to his own works but he applies them to the works of other writers for critical evaluations. From these cited works, we can easily compile certain key principles that Poe consistently believed in and used. These include his emphasis on (1) the unity of effect, (2) his rejection of allegory and didacticism, (3) the epic poem's being a non-poem, (4) the brevity of a work of art, (5) the appeal to the emotions, (6) the ideal subject matter for art, and (7) the importance of emotional responses; in addition, each of these separate ideas is closely associated with the others. For example, because Poe put such importance on creating an effect that would appeal to the emotions, he rejected all works of primitive art or works based on a primitive sense of art. Likewise, he believed that didactic writing was for the pulpit and had no place in the realm of artistic creation. Anything that appealed solely to the intellect could not be considered art because art existed in the world of the beautiful, the refined, and the aesthetic. Consequently, Poe, as a Romantic writer, dismissed most of the literary works of the eighteenth century, a period which concerned itself mainly with satire. For Poe, satire could create no sense of the beautiful within the reader. And also, much of eighteenth-century literature is epigrammatic (something short), and Poe believed that the epigrammatic approach to art could not create a lasting emotional impression within the reader. Writings that were moralistic or allegorical were likewise unacceptable to Poe because they failed to appeal to one's sense of beauty.

More than any other principle, Poe emphasized the unity of effect that one should strive for in any work of art. For example, words and phrases that occur and re-occur in Poe's various critical writings include the following: "to affect," "the totality of impression," "the unity of effect," "the novelty of the effect alone," and "the single effect," and these are only selected examples of his repetition of the value of this principle; Poe's writings contain many more examples of this emphasis. By these statements, Poe meant that the artist should decide what effect he wants to create in the reader's emotional response and then proceed to use all of his creative powers to achieve that particular effect: "Of the in-numerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart or the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" ("The Philosophy of Composition"). Fear, for example, was often the effect Poe chose for many of his short stories and every word and every image was carefully chosen to create an effect of fear within the mind of the reader. (In regard to this, see the critical discussions of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Pit and the Pendulum.") After choosing the effect that one desires, the artist should then decide on the best manner to achieve that effect, whether by incidents or plot, by narration, or by a peculiar tone, or by a "peculiarity both of incident and tone . . . looking . . . for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid . . . in the construction of the effect" ("Philosophy of Composition").

In much of his poetry, the effect he most aimed for was one of beauty and melancholy. "The most elevating and the most pure pleasure is found in the contemplation of the beautiful," he said in the same essay, and "if beauty is the province of the poem, then the tone should be one of sadness. . . . Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones." As a result of these views, Poe felt that the most effective subject for a work of art was the death of a beautiful young lady; this is perhaps Poe's most famous and most often repeated dictum, and, furthermore, to achieve the greatest amount of emotional melancholy, the death of the beautiful young lady should be expressed by the lips of the bereaved lover. As examples, we have "Annabel Lee," "Lenore," "Ligeia," "To Helen" and numerous other works on this subject. And even though Poe did recognize other subjects as legitimate topics for art (he did praise Hawthorne, who very rarely concerned himself with a beautiful, dying woman), the death of a beautiful woman remained Poe's favorite subject. In his own words, he writes: "The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover" ("Philosophy of Composition").

In conjunction with the unity of effect, we have Poe's dictum on the appropriate length of a work of art. Poe holds that "a long poem does not exist . . . that the phrase 'a long poem' is a flat contradiction in terms." Therefore, a work of art should be able to achieve its effect in one sitting. For this reason, Poe believed that the greatest art was contained in a poem of about 100 lines (his most famous poem, "The Raven," is 108 lines long), and Poe, in a similar vein, believed that the short story should be of a length that one could read it in one sitting. The totality of effect, he said, was destroyed if two sittings were required for a work of art.

Such long poems as Paradise Lost were, for Poe, a series of poems. If the purpose of art — a poem, or a short story — is to excite and elevate the soul, then "after the lapse of half an hour," the mind cannot sustain such pure emotion. Consequently, Poe's theory about the length of the work of art — "to be read in one sitting" and no more than "half an hour" — has influenced many subsequent writers.

In terms of Poe's actual practice of writing literature, the reader or critic can deduce certain principles that Poe himself never set down, but that he practiced again and again as an author. For example, Poe is considered to be the father of the modern detective story. Concerning this, certain critical principles associated with the writing of the detective story are presented in the introduction to and discussions of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter," yet Poe himself never wrote down a unified critical principle which should govern the writing of a detective story. One can see, however, that the literary principles that Poe employed in writing his own detective stories, in large part, are universal principles that apply to a major portion of all detective fiction being written today.

Poe also wrote about the unity of effect, but he never wrote about the use of a closed environment, per se, to achieve that unity of effect. However, as we look at the totality of his creative work, we see that a large portion of his works takes place in a very closed environment. The following selected examples do not exhaust Poe's use of this principle, but they do give us a good idea of the importance he placed on this device: "The Cask of Amontillado" occurs in an underground, closed vault; "The Pit and the Pendulum" takes place within the closed confines above a pit; "The Fall of the House of Usher" is set in the closed confines of a decaying castle; and the action in the poem "The Raven" takes place within a closed room or possibly, as some say, within the narrator's mind; similarly, the people in "The Masque of the Red Death" are locked behind closed iron gates and confined within a closed castle, "William Wilson" is told within the frenzied mind of a schizophrenic, and the action of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is confined within a closed room. The application of this principle can also apply to the major portion of Poe's works; it is clearly one of Poe's prime precepts for an ingredient of the short story.

In conclusion, although many people do not agree with Poe's theories, they have nevertheless been the subject of continual discussion. One could also point out that Aristotle, the world's most famous critic, lived about 380 B.C., yet his theories are still valid and provocative and are still discussed, even though few artists and writers today adhere strictly to his critical principles. Some of Poe's theories may seem, at times, to be out of style when one compares them with the current theories of no form at all, or nonobjective writing, but as long as Romantic literature is read, Poe's critical theories and principles will continue to be important.

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Before Prosody: Early English Poetics in Practice and Theory

The primary purpose of the essay is to offer medieval English poetry as a case in point for historical poetics.

Modern Language Quarterly

Since the sixteenth century, the history of English poetics has had two sides: a history of theory and a history of practice. [1] In the late sixteenth century, classically educated men subjected accentual-syllabic English verse to Latin quantitative scansion and attributed the confused result to deficiencies in English poetry and the English language. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from John Milton’s metrical experiments to George Hickes’s monumental Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus (1705), poetry and prosodic theory were both under continual development. The late nineteenth century witnessed an upsurge in the production of both English poetry and theoretical writing about its metrical forms. In the early twentieth century, Anglo-American modernists championed free verse through poetic compositions as well as directive treatises.

Contemporary literary scholars are mapping new connections between the history of theory and the history of practice. Yopie Prins, Meredith Martin, and other scholars of Victorian poetry have called for a ‘historical poetics’ that would reevaluate the received narrative of English literary history by recovering alternative ways of theorizing and experiencing poetic form (Hall 2011; Martin 2012; Prins 2008). Martin’s 2012 book, The Rise and Fall of Meter , trawls now-obscure poetics manuals and the annals of prosodic infighting to challenge the inevitability of modern scansional techniques. Through a combination of archival research and cultural analysis, Martin implicates the concept of meter in British war and nation-building, from Empire Day to the National Service League to the New English Dictionary . The unlikely protagonists of Martin’s new literary history are the prosodist George Saintsbury and the poet-prosodists Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Coventry Patmore. Martin argues that meter mattered in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England, and in ways that were strategically obscured (and then simply forgotten) by later polemicists and practitioners.

In addition to meter, this emergent research program reconsiders two other literary topics of enduring critical interest. On one side, historical poetics shades off into the histories of poetic genres, especially lyric, as in the essays gathered in the January 2008 issue of PMLA under the heading “The New Lyric Studies” (cp. Jackson 2014). On the other side, historical poetics shades off into the histories of poetry per se , with focus on the twentieth-century amalgamation of diverse literary forms and practices into an idea of Poetry with a capital ‘P.’ These two projects of historical recovery converge in Virginia Jackson’s book-length study, Dickinson’s Misery (2005). By coordinating material and cultural analysis with a critique of editorial and critical history, Jackson seeks to relocate the lyricism of Emily Dickinson’s verse from practices of poetic composition to practices of poetic reading. In Jackson’s account, the New Critical flattening of poetry into Poetry and the explosion of the genre of the lyric are best comprehended as one and the same historical process. Jackson proposes to break into new understandings of the histories of English poetry, less by offering a new account of poetic form than by fixing critical attention on “the history of lyricization” (2008: 183) as a cultural process in its own right.

From different angles, Simon Jarvis and Jonathan Culler have endeavored to broaden the scope of historical poetics to include the description of poetic forms in their aesthetic richness and historical dynamism. In a pair of essays responding to Prins’s program of historical poetics, Jarvis argues for “technique” as “the way in which the work of art most intimately registers historical experience” (2010: 931; cp. 2014). Conceiving of poetry as “an institution, a series of practices as real as the belief in them and the capacity for them” (2010: 933), Jarvis questions the presumption that the representation of poetic practices mirrors the practices themselves. “The history of verse thinking is not the same as the history of representations of verse thinking” (932), he cautions. Similarly, Culler qualifies the poststructuralist critique of the category of lyric, emphasizing the distinction between theory and practice. In the case of the genre of lyric, Culler contends that “the weight of tradition helps make there be something to be right or wrong about” (2009: 883; cp. 2014, 2015). Jarvis’s and Culler’s reformulations of historical poetics share the assumption that the historical development of literary practices might matter as much as, and differently from, the historical development of metaliterary discourses.

Disagreement about the grounds on which to reconstruct the history of verse activates long-standing tensions between extrinsic and intrinsic or conceptual and practical approaches to literary history. Prins registers the familiar admonition that formalism become historicist when she submits that “practical application is not the point of historical poetics. There are other, more interesting questions” (2008: 233). Jarvis makes the less familiar gesture of recommending that historicism become formalist: “Historical poetics needs above all to be wary of thinking that it can exit from the painful difficulty of specifying the history of verse technique” (2014: 115). Tension between ostensibly opposite ways of stating a research problem is partially a function of the historical period under consideration. Distinctions between extrinsic and intrinsic literary histories, or between form and the representation of form, became newly contentious as the professional study of prosody picked up steam in the mid nineteenth century. Dennis Taylor argues that the Victorian period “was the first period to discover a theory of metre adequate to the genius of its poets” (1988: 3-4). It was in the late nineteenth century (though in Russia, not England) that the phrase ‘historical poetics’ was first wielded (Jarvis 2010: 932). Jarvis frames his reformulation of historical poetics in terms of the study of pre-Victorian poets, primarily Pope and Wordsworth.

Thus far, historical poetics has been most strongly associated with the study of nineteenth-century poetry. This essay takes a longer view onto the histories of English poetry from the perspective of Old English and Middle English verse. The primary purpose of the essay is to offer medieval English poetry as a case in point for historical poetics, thereby bringing a different literary archive to bear on the methodological debate sketched above. Medievalists have much to contribute to the conversation about the historical perplexities of English verse, particularly since medieval poets have left behind no ars poetica explicating their understanding of English meter and poetic style. Medieval English poets practiced literary form at a time when vernacular poetics had not yet become an academic subject or a sustained cultural discourse. As such, the case of medieval English verse throws into relief the terms of modern debates about the idea and practice of poetry.

The contribution of this essay to the field of historical poetics will be to indicate a constitutive gap between the practice and theory of verse. Meaningful difference between the practice and the theorization of verse may strike some readers as self-evident. However, such difference is not always assumed in the new wave of research into the history of poetics. The gap between the practice and theory of English verse was wider in the medieval centuries than at any other time, but coming to terms with this gap, I argue, yields methodological lessons that can be carried forward into later periods of study.

Medieval English poetry was composed, copied, and consumed not only before prosody but also before modern education, modern militarism, modern nations, modern racialism, the globalization of English, and the development of English literature as an academic discipline—all central themes in Martin’s book. Through three case studies drawn from ongoing research on the alliterative tradition, this essay seeks to demonstrate what is distinctive about the cultural work of early English poetics. I focus on the alliterative tradition because subsequent developments in literary history render it paradigmatically alien from a modern perspective. The term ‘alliterative’ (an eighteenth-century designation, unknown to medieval poets) refers to the unrhymed meter used in Beowulf (?eighth/tenth c.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late fourteenth c.), and around 300 other English poems. Despite the modern nomenclature, it is not alliteration per se but a set of metrical principles governing patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables that is definitive of this meter. Thus alliterating prose and alliterating accentual-syllabic poems (such as Pearl ) fall outside the alliterative tradition. Though it is not the primary purpose of this essay to discuss alliterative meter in detail, more technical studies are cited where appropriate.

The three case studies concern the continuity of alliterative meter across ten centuries of literary history, c . 650-1550 CE; Geoffrey Chaucer’s perceptions of alliterative romance in the late fourteenth century; and the northern and prophetic coloring of alliterative verse after 1450. Each case study begins by summarizing formal and cultural contexts for alliterative verse and ends by positioning knowledge about alliterative verse as a contribution to historical poetics. The conclusion connects medieval practice and modern theory more directly by looking forward to the sixteenth century and the inauguration of sustained metadiscourses of English poetic form. By combining methodologies from metrics, cultural studies, historiography, literary criticism, and genre studies, I propose to assess the historical significance of alliterative verse (and, by implication, other medieval English poetry). This essay takes its place beside recent scholarship that historicizes Old English and Middle English poetic forms (Bahr 2013; Brantley 2013; Butterfield 2011; Cannon 2004; Johnson 2013; Thornbury 2014; Trilling 2009; and Tyler 2006).

As its subtitle indicates, this essay traverses the dialectic between the practice and the theory of verse by moving from practice to theory. This movement is facilitated by the order of case studies: in the case of alliterative meter, no prosodic metadiscourse survives, and probably none ever existed; in the case of Chaucer’s perceptions of alliterative romance, the perceptions are sparse and largely inadequate to the poetic practice they describe; while in the case of post-1450 alliterative verse, literary history witnessed a more subtle feedback loop between perception and practice. By arranging the case studies from least to most self-reflexive, I mean to trace a historically dynamic relationship between the perception and the practice of verse in this poetic tradition. The conceptual movement from practice to theory has come to seem less intuitive than the reverse in the light of modern “prosody wars” (Martin 2012: 2), but I argue that it better represents the elaboration of prosodic metadiscourse upon and around preexisting poetic practices in early English literary culture.

Across the three case studies, I will emphasize the compatibility of the competing definitions of historical poetics summarized above. In recovering the cultural meaning of medieval English poetic forms, this essay takes the view that the extrinsic and intrinsic approaches to poetics are complementary. On the one hand, I share Martin’s skepticism that poetics and cultural studies can or should be conducted separately. Martin’s concept of “metrical cultures” (2012: 14) can illuminate medieval English verse with little adjustment. I also take to heart Prins’s caveat that “the sound of poetry is never heard without mediation” (2008: 229). If anything, the caveat is even more appropriate for early English poetics. Since its rediscovery by modern antiquarians, the sound of early English verse has never been heard without considerable mediation. On the other hand, I will also affirm with Jarvis that “[t]he relationship between thinking about verse and thinking in verse is not necessarily a cooperative one” (2014: 115). The practical/theoretical dichotomy implied by Prins’s declaration that “practical application is not the point of historical poetics” risks merely inverting the overinvestments of the New Criticism: the dividing line between form and history remains intact, but researchers have now migrated to the side of history. In my view, historical poetics should strive to understand literary form and literary history as mutually constitutive. At the interface of formalist and historicist research protocols, Prins’s historical poetics and Jarvis’s historical poetics converge.

Before turning to the first case study, a note on the state of the field. The discussion of early English poetics in this essay is not intended to represent the consensus view among medievalists. For many aspects of the study of alliterative verse, no consensus exists. This is especially true of the subfield of alliterative metrics, which is currently experiencing a growth phase. Important discoveries have been made since 2005 but without yet displacing prior critical appraisals (overviews: Cable 2009; Cole 2010: 162-64; Weiskott 2013b, forthcoming-b). Throughout, I summarize and cite the published arguments that seem to me the most persuasive, in service of the goal of making a medievalist contribution to a larger conversation about the historical study of poetry. Statements that rely primarily on original research are accompanied by citations.

Alliterative Meter, 650-1550: Practice before Theory

The term ‘alliterative meter’ denotes the unrhymed meter used in Old English poetry, as in Beowulf ; in Early Middle English alliterative poetry, as in Lawman’s Brut ( c . 1200) [2] ; and in Middle English alliterative poetry, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers Plowman ( c . 1370-90). Because the study of Old English poetry and the study of Middle English alliterative poetry have usually been conducted separately, and because no extant alliterative poem is datable to the period c . 1250-1340, some scholars have expressed doubts about the continuity of the alliterative tradition from Old to Middle English (Blake 1979; Salter 1988: 170-79; Turville-Petre 1977). Skepticism about continuity arose in response to early twentieth-century scholars whose arguments for an alliterative longue durée appeared unduly nationalistic to a later generation (Cornelius 2012). More recent scholarship reaffirms continuity in alliterative verse history. It does so by reconstructing a plausible formal trajectory for the alliterative meter, Old English to Early Middle English to Middle English (Putter, Jefferson, and Stokes 2007: 260-62; Russom 2004; Weiskott 2013a, 2013b; Yakovlev 2008).

From Old to Middle English, certain aspects of the alliterative meter remained remarkably stable. Two forms of metrical continuity lend themselves to brief description. First, in all phases of the alliterative tradition, the metrical line consisted of two ‘half-lines,’ divided by a mid-line syntactical break or ‘caesura.’ Thus the first lines of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight take the following form, where a tabbed space represents the caesura:

                      Hwæt we Gar-Dena     in geardagum

                      (“Listen! We [have heard] of the Spear-Danes’ | [glory] in days of yore”)

                      Siþen þe sege and þe assaut     watz sesed at Troye.

                      (“After the siege and the onslaught | was finished at Troy”)

At no point in the evolution from Old to Middle English alliterative meter does the caesura cease to bear metrical significance. Second, in all phases of the alliterative tradition a binary distinction between content words (nouns, adjectives, etc .) and function words (articles, pronouns, etc .) determined metrical stress assignment (Duggan 1990; Momma 1997: 28-54; Russom 2009). Content words normally receive metrical stress, while function words normally do not. In the lines cited, the content words Gar-Dena , geardagum , sege , assaut , sesed , and Troye receive metrical stress on their root syllable(s), while the function words hwæt , we , in , siþen , þe , and , watz , and at do not. Thus the lines scan as follows, where ‘S’ represents a metrically stressed syllable and ‘x’ represents a metrically unstressed syllable:

                      x           x    S      S x     x    S     S x

                     Hwæt we Gar-Dena     in geardagum

                     x   x     x  S  x x      x x   S         x     S  x  x      S  x

                    Siþen þe sege and þe assaut | watz sesed at Troye .

Both forms of continuity—half-line structure and the hierarchy of content words and function words—distinguished alliterative meter from non-alliterative English metrical traditions as these developed from the late twelfth century onward. In Chaucer’s fourteenth-century pentameter, for example, the unit of composition is the line, not the half-line, and metrical stress is determined to a larger degree by contextual phrasal and rhythmical contour. Thus the opening line of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales scans as follows, with metrically stressed function words underlined:

                     S           x   S    x      S     x     S    x    S   x

                      Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

or possibly

                     x           S   x   S x   S      x     S    x    S   x

                     Whan that Aprillë with his shoures soote.

Here the function words whan (or possibly that ) and with receive metrical stress due to the expectation of an alternating rhythm. Promotion of function words and (after c . 1100) demotion of content words did occur in alliterative meter, but as uncommon metrical expedients rather than constitutive features of metrical stress assignment.

Other aspects of the alliterative metrical system changed or disappeared over the course of 900 years. Two forms of metrical change lend themselves to brief description. First, Old English meter accords a special license to verbal prefixes, e.g. , be- in becuman ‘become’ (Cornelius 2015: 475-76; Yakovlev 2008: 57-60). Unlike other metrically unstressed syllables, verbal prefixes may be omitted altogether from the metrical count (‘prefix license’). Thus Beowulf 271a scans as follows, where ‘p’ represents an omitted prefix:

                     p     S    x x  x     S    S

                     Gewat þa ofer wægholm

                     (“[the ship] went then over the billowy sea”)

The pattern pSxxxSS is metrically equivalent to SxxxSS, a normal pattern. Verbal prefixes are less frequently omitted for the sake of meter in Early Middle English alliterative verse (Yakovlev 2008: 198-200); by the fourteenth century, the prefix license has disappeared from the metrical system. Second, in certain metrical positions Old English meter permitted alternation between monosyllabic (‘short’) and multisyllabic (‘long’) sequences of metrically unstressed syllables (‘dips’). In the first line of Beowulf cited above, for example, the first half-line begins with a long dip ( xx SSx) while the second begins with a short dip ( x SSx). In the course of metrical history, alternation between short and long dips came to be regularized in the second half-line (Cable 1991: 66-84; Duggan 1986; Putter, Jefferson, and Stokes 2007: 19-118). By the fourteenth century the second half-line must contain one long dip. Thus, where the metrical patterns xSSx and xxSSx were equally acceptable for the Beowulf poet in either half-line, the Gawain poet avoids placing the pattern xSSx in the second half-line.

This continuous history of poetic practice must be pieced together with modern scholarly tools: there survives no medieval theory of alliterative meter. It is doubtful whether an alliterative ars poetica ever existed, for poets had little cause to theorize vernacular prosody at a time when English was a second choice to Latin in literary culture. From the seventh to the mid sixteenth century in England, ars metrica and ars poetica referred exclusively to Latin meter and were almost always composed in the Latin language (Purcell 1996: 71-120; Ruff 2005). Faute de mieux , scholars have scoured alliterative poetry itself for pronouncements about poetic form. However, the four passages most often nominated as reflexive statements about meter are all better interpreted otherwise (Cornelius 2012: 270-71; Pearsall 1977: 153-54). For example, when the Gawain poet identifies his tale as being “With lel letteres loken” (“held together with loyal letters,” 35), he was probably referring to literary composition and oral recitation (with letteres = ‘writing’) rather than to alliteration per se . Even if the reference is to alliteration, it is difficult to extrapolate a metrical theory from such a generalized allusion. Quite simply, for 900 years alliterative meter constituted an untheorized cultural practice (Cornelius forthcoming: Ch. 1). Medieval authors could think and write with some precision about vernacular language (Wogan-Browne et al . 1999), yet this kind of formalized self-consciousness did not extend to vernacular prosody. Evidently poets became inculturated in the alliterative tradition not through formal instruction but by repeated imitation of their contemporaries and predecessors. As a result, twenty-first-century theories of the alliterative metrical system have no direct medieval antecedents. The modern field of alliterative metrics reaches back only to the eighteenth century and later, when this meter was recognized first as quantitative, then as an arrangement of alliterating sounds, and finally and most enduringly as accentual (Cornelius 2015; Weiskott forthcoming-b).

The absence of sustained theoretical attention to alliterative meter during the Middle Ages did not prevent meter from carrying cultural baggage. To the contrary, alliterative meter embodied and refracted many cultural forms over 900 years. For example, alliterative meter appears to have been persistently marked as vernacular in literary culture. Many of the most-copied alliterative poems are brief proverbs that survive only indirectly, in Latin or non-alliterative English contexts. These alliterative snippets showcase sententiousness and vernacularity. Thus cultural preconceptions shaped the alliterative tradition at a fundamental level, that of manuscript survival. More broadly, the politics of alliterative writing changed profoundly after the twelfth century, when non-alliterative English meters were first introduced on the model of French, Italian, and Latin verse forms. Whereas Old English meter had occupied the entire space of English poetry, by the fourteenth century the alliterative meter has assumed a minor position in a newly diversified metrical landscape. The gradual marginalization of the alliterative tradition within the English literary field was a centuries-long cultural process that inflected the meaning and form of alliterative verse. The next section uses the case of Chaucer’s metaliterary comments to explore the idea of alliterative verse in late medieval English literary culture in greater detail.

The medieval English situation confirms, with particular clarity, Jarvis’s view that thinking in verse and thinking about verse are different activities. In English literary history, the practice of poetics predates the theory of prosody by 900 years. On a long view, the emergence and consolidation of prosodic metadiscourse, not the practice of meter, is the historical process in need of special explanation. In this way, the alliterative tradition defamiliarizes the nineteenth- and twentieth-century prosodic discourses analyzed by Martin. The “more interesting [ i . e . theoretical] questions” adumbrated by Prins must themselves be understood as historically specific, insofar as they depend on post-medieval critical categories. The absence of a metadiscourse of vernacular prosody in medieval English literary culture directs attention to meter as an unselfconscious ingrained practice, that is, a habitus , in both the medieval and the Bourdieusian sense of the term. To say this is not to isolate medieval English meters from culture or history but, on the contrary, to begin to identify the forms through which poetic traditions functioned as cultural institutions.

Chaucer and Alliterative Romance: Perceptions or Practice

If medieval English writers almost never set about to construct theoretical explanations for vernacular metrical practices, they could nevertheless perceive those practices, represent them poetically, and deploy stereotypes about them. Poets working after the introduction of non-alliterative English meters in the twelfth century certainly recognized the metrical choices that lay before them. Yet this recognition was always pressurized by longer histories of metrical form. The twelfth-century schism between the alliterative tradition and English poetry per se had a lasting impact on late medieval perceptions of this verse form—indeed, a more lasting impact than late medieval writers themselves could have appreciated (Weiskott 2013a: 34-48). Lacking modern disciplinary tools, medieval contemporaries essentially lacked access to metrical history. Given changes in language, orthography, meter, and forms of textualization [3] between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, one might doubt whether Middle English poets or audiences knew the first thing about Old English poems (Cameron 1974; Sauer 1997). It is telling that one of the most explicit medieval comments about alliterative meter came in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, roughly 200 years after alliterative meter first became visible as one of several metrical choices in the vernacular. It is also telling that this comment came from a non-practitioner: Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer ( d . 1400) was a bureaucrat, a courtier, a translator, and a vernacular poetic innovator. His use of the English language connects him to, but also distinguishes him from, contemporary and earlier writers working in English, French, Italian, and Latin. Almost uniquely among pre-1400 poets, Chaucer is no less easily categorized as a European writer who happened to write in English than as an English writer with international aspirations (Butterfield 2009: 8-10; Smith 2006). His attachments to meters mirror his attachments to languages. Over the course of his career, Chaucer pushed the boundaries of the non-alliterative English metrical traditions as these had developed for two centuries before his birth. A master of the French-derived English tetrameter, Chaucer also synthesized French and Italian precursors to craft a new English meter, known today as the pentameter (Duffell 2000). Although his literary canonization over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped render the alliterative tradition alien for later writers and scholars, in his own day Chaucer typified the sensibilities of an aggressive London literary avant-garde —in matters metrical no less than in other respects.

In what has become the most famous medieval remark about alliterative verse, Chaucer has his Parson declare to the other Canterbury Tales pilgrims, “I kan nat geeste ‘rum, ram, ruf,’ by lettre” (X 43; all quotations of Chaucer are fr. Chaucer 1987). The Parson’s remark is often pressed into service as evidence of the provincialism of the Middle English alliterative tradition. Yet it is not primarily intended to denigrate alliterative verse but to characterize the Parson as one totally lacking in poetic skill (Mueller 2013: 5-6). If alliterative meter is not supposed to rate highly for Chaucer’s fashion-forward audience, it nevertheless makes the short-list of forms that lie beyond the Parson’s abilities. That he rhymes “but litel bettre” (X 44) and is “nat textueel” (X 57) belies the Parson’s excuse for foregoing alliterative meter (“I am a Southren man,” X 42), and it is by no means certain that Chaucer is here endorsing the designation of alliterative verse as lowbrow, provincial, and generically typecast. The immediate meaning of the reference seems to be only that a bumbling southerner would be likely to disparage alliterative poetry in such terms. Ultimately, the value of mentioning the “‘rum, ram, ruf,’ by lettre” may not be metropolitan snobbery so much as the implication that Chaucer himself was better informed about alliterative verse.

This Chaucerian one-liner adumbrates a continuum of perception within which the alliterative tradition operated in the late medieval centuries. On the one hand, Chaucer marks off the alliterative meter as socially, generically, and geographically exotic. The implicit comparisons between the homely and the sophisticated, between romance and everything else, and between the south and the north of England serve to consolidate Chaucer’s position in a literary and cultural avant-garde . On the other hand, the alliterative meter also appears here as a skill, a cultural practice that eludes a plainspoken southern parson. All of these perceptions of the alliterative meter had a history already in the fourteenth century, and all of them would gain further traction in the following two centuries, as alliterative verse became increasingly marginalized within the English literary field.

Internal views of the alliterative tradition, from the perspective of a practicing poet, a scribe, or a well-versed reader, must have differed from Chaucer’s external view. Chaucer’s Parson gives voice to a prosodic stereotype: like all stereotypes, this one exaggerates certain features of its target and ignores others. In fact, none of the Parson’s three implied opinions about alliterative verse—that it is northern, low-class, and circumscribed by the genre of romance—do justice to contemporary poetic practice. Piers Plowman , by far the best-attested Middle English alliterative poem, partially takes place in London and certainly circulated in manuscript there; the poem has been thought to mark a significant juncture in London literary history (Hanna 2005: 243-304). Some other fourteenth-century alliterative poems were likely composed in or near the metropolis, e.g. , A Bird in Bishopswood and A Complaint against Blacksmiths (Kennedy 1987; Salter 1988: 199-214). Nor were alliterative poets déclassé; they labored in the same multilingual and international literary environment as Chaucer. Many Middle English alliterative poems take the form of direct translations of French or Latin texts, while others show mastery of subtle theological distinctions or the finer points of courtly cuisine. Alliterative poetry embodied rather than antagonized an upwardly mobile English poetic establishment. Finally, alliterative verse comes in more flavors than romance. Piers Plowman can be variously classified as a political tract, an allegorical debate, a satirical treatise, and a prophecy: it is perhaps least easily apprehended as a romance. The poet of the arch-romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is also thought to have composed Cleanness and Patience , two theological/homiletic treatises in alliterative meter.

Discrepancies between the terms in which Chaucer discussed alliterative meter and the ways in which it was actually practiced in his lifetime do not negate Chaucer’s perceptions. To the contrary, the discrepancies illustrate an important point about meter and the perception of meter: the former can exceed (or, put differently, fail to live up to) the latter. Through the character of the Parson, Chaucer put the idea, but not the practice, of alliterative meter to work. One reason to take such work seriously would be to weave metrical perceptions into cultural history.

The Canterbury Tales represents perhaps the first time in the history of English alliterative verse that metaliterary perceptions were expressed with enough specificity to begin to tell the cultural stakes of meter. Alliterative verse had always been a culturally charged idea and series of practices; Chaucer identified it as a topic for conversation as well. The conversation about alliterative meter went on in fits and starts from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and then, in a more professional mode, from the eighteenth century to the present. Both of these conversations, separated by the unalliterative seventeenth century, are of intrinsic historical interest, and either might be made the subject of a cultural history in the style of Martin’s book. Yet I have suggested here that historians of verse must resist the temptation to subsume historical poetic practices under historical discourses about those practices. The cultural meaning of reflexive commentary on meter remains underspecified when divorced from analysis of the metrical-cultural situation that the commentary addresses. It is important to inquire into Chaucer’s attitudes toward alliterative meter; it is equally important to recognize that his attitudes overstate the fourteenth-century metrical-cultural situation. The extreme rarity and severe inadequacy of contemporary accounts of alliterative verse are salient features of the tradition itself, and features that can only be appreciated by combining formalist and historicist methodologies.

The Alliterative Tradition after 1450: Perceptions and Practice

In the decades after Chaucer’s death, the cultural meaning of English meter changed in unprecedented ways. Through normal literary influence, the increasingly central position of London in English literary culture, and some special pleading by Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, William Caxton, and other taste-makers, Chaucer’s pentameter rapidly ascended the ranks of English meters. The fifteenth century witnessed the inception of a Chaucer canonization industry that quickly installed Chaucer atop a newly metropolitan hierarchy of English poets. The Chaucer canonization industry was also a pentameter canonization industry: by the end of the fifteenth century, the pentameter had come to occupy the position of honor in a reconfigured metrical menu. The last extant alliterative poems were composed toward the middle of the sixteenth century, after which time the alliterative meter disappeared from the active repertoire of English verse forms. The period between 1450 and 1550 thus marks a turning point in alliterative verse history and a new phase in the interplay between metrical perceptions and metrical practice.

One indication of the cultural and metrical pressures bearing on late alliterative verse is the emergence of a new kind of alliterating English poetry in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This new kind of poetry, typified by the Awntyrs off Arthure (late fourteenth/early fifteenth c.), employed heavy alliteration, alliterative poetic vocabulary, and even alliterative rhythms in an elaborately rhymed stanza structure. Alliterating stanzaic poems like Awntyrs tell the story of certain aspects of alliterative meter going mainstream in new, composite meters. Though traditionally grouped together with (unrhymed) alliterative poems, the alliterating stanzaic poems differ from them both metrically and syntactically (Cornelius forthcoming: Ch. 5; Lawton 1980: 611-12). In the remainder of this section, I focus on the unrhymed poems.

In contrast to the relative abundance of alliterative poetry dating from the previous hundred years, only eight extant (unrhymed) alliterative poems are datable to after 1450: the Ireland Prophecy (Weiskott forthcoming-c) and the Vision of William Banastre (Weiskott forthcoming-a), both late fifteenth-century political prophecies; the Prophecie of Beid , Prophecie of Bertlington , Prophecie of Waldhaue , and Prophesie of Gildas , late political prophecies from the printed Whole Prophesie of Scotland , &c . (1603); William Dunbar’s Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow ( c . 1500); and the battle poem Scottish Field (1515-47). Though alliterative meter clearly remained a viable choice after 1450 in certain literary and social contexts, these eight poems testify to the increasing marginalization of alliterative poetry in literary culture. The perceived capacities of the alliterative form must have undergone severe restriction after 1450. Fully six of the eight poems are political prophecies; all eight have connections to Scotland, whether thematic, geographical, or codicological. All eight are recorded in northern dialect forms in manuscript and early print. The idea that the alliteration tradition was pushed northward by the Chaucerian tradition describes a late medieval cultural stereotype about alliterative meter as much as it describes an actual historical process. The feedback loop between poets, printers, compilers, scribes, and an incipient reading public colored the alliterative tradition northern after 1450, completing a process of prosodic typecasting that had begun at least a century earlier.

The pivotal event in the final chapter of alliterative verse history was the appearance in 1550 of the first print edition of Piers Plowman , edited by Robert Crowley (Stinson 2008: 178-81). Two more printings followed in rapid succession later in the same year. Here an alliterative poem has become the object of quasi-scholarly inquiry. Crowley’s brief preface, “The Printer to the Reader,” is a monument in the history of textual criticism. It features, inter alia , description of alliteration as a formal feature: “the nature of hys miter is, to haue thre wordes at the leaste in euery verse whiche beginne with some one letter” (Short Title Catalogue [STC] 19906, ii r ). Especially telling is Crowley’s perception that alliterative meter is old-fashioned: “He [Langland] wrote altogyther in miter: but not after y e maner of our rimers that write nowe adayes (for his verses ende not alike)” (ii r ). This remark implies that Crowley did not regard alliterative meter as a live option in 1550. Nevertheless, Crowley trusts that his prefatory remarks on verse form will enable readers to enjoy the meter of Piers Plowman (“This thinge [ i.e. , alliteration] noted, the miter shal be very pleasaunt to read,” ii v ). Many metrical specialists no longer understand alliteration as a defining feature of alliterative meter (Cable 1991: 132; Hanna 1995; Yakovlev 2008: 23-4), but Crowley’s view would have a long afterlife in scholarship.

In addition to marking alliterative meter as obsolescent, Crowley anticipates later writers in associating alliterative meter with the genre of political prophecy. In his preface, Crowley disputes the authenticity and interpretation of two passages in Piers Plowman that might be construed as prophecies (“And that which foloweth and geueth it the face of a prophecye is lyke to be a thinge added of some other man than the fyrste autour” and “Loke not vpon this boke therfore, to talke of wonders paste or to come,” ii v ). Crowley titled his edition The Vision of Pierce Plowman , and later commentators would read the poem in this form as well as continuing to read manuscript copies. In engaging Piers Plowman as prophecy, Crowley was part of a sixteenth-century crowd. In his Scriptorum illustrium maioris Bryttanie (1557-59), John Bale noted that Langland “foretold many things prophetically, which we have seen fulfilled in our days” [ propheticè plura prędixit, quę nostris diebus impleri uidimus ] (STC 1296a, 474; translation mine). In a passing mention of Piers Plowman in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham likewise dubbed Langland “a very true Prophet” of the Reformation (STC 20519, 50). And the unnamed author of the Petition directed to Her Most Excellent Maiestie (1591), sometimes identified as the pamphleteer Job Throckmorton, cited Piers Plowman as political prophecy: “ Piers Plowman likewise wrote against the state of Bishops, and prophecied their fall in these wordes” (STC 1522a, 34). These notices join the evidence of the eight extant post-1450 alliterative poems in suggesting the extent to which alliterative meter and political prophecy overlapped in perception and practice after 1450 (Weiskott 2016, forthcoming-a, forthcoming-c).

The generic coloring that attached to the alliterative form by the sixteenth century explains the comments of Crowley, Bale, Puttenham, and the author of the Petition . It also explains the practice of the poets responsible for the six post-1450 alliterative prophecies. Finally, it explains the preservation of these poems. Four of them survive because of their inclusion in the printed Whole Prophesie of Scotland , &c ., issued to celebrate the accession of a Scottish king to the English throne (James VI/I), a key prediction of medieval English political prophecies. The other two, the Ireland Prophecy and the Vision of William Banastre , appear in large fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscript anthologies of prophecies and political writings. The prophetic context of these poems suggests another reason to historicize poetic practices and perceptions: this is often the surest method for discovering why individual texts were transmitted and preserved. Taken together, the composition, copying, printing, editing, and interpretation of alliterative poetry after 1450 register the same intensifying typecasting in literary culture.

In comparison with earlier periods of alliterative verse history, the scarcity of (unrhymed) alliterative verse after 1450 caused more significant overlap between the practice and perception of meter. [4] In a process familiar from other chapters of literary and cultural history, in the case of alliterative verse typecasting, marginalization, and scarcity entered into a powerful feedback loop. The result was the death of a millennium-old poetic tradition and, not coincidentally, the cultural promotion of a new one: the pentameter tradition. The last phase of the alliterative tradition was also the first in which the practice of alliterative meter lived up to (or, put differently, was reduced to) a set of rigid cultural preconceptions. Late alliterative verse illustrates how cultural preconceptions can come to stigmatize poetic practices, and, in turn, how poetic practices can come to reinforce cultural preconceptions.

The final 100 years of alliterative verse, then, mark the juncture at which intrinsic and extrinsic modern approaches to alliterative meter most directly coincide. In part, this is due to the wider scope of the conversation about English meters in the sixteenth century, a development examined in greater detail in the conclusion of this essay. At the same time, the conformity of poetic perceptions to poetic practice in the alliterative tradition must itself be recognized as a culturally significant development, one that distinguishes post-1450 alliterative verse from earlier phases of the tradition. A corollary of distinguishing between histories of metrical practice and histories of metrical perception is affirming that, sometimes, the two intersect. And yet, for the alliterative tradition at least, such cooperation between perceptions and practice signaled a narrowing of the metrical imaginary. Meter was able to think less as proto-prosodists were able to think more about it. Post-1450 alliterative verse can be seen to illustrate its own marginalization in ever broader brushstrokes. In line with Prins’s dictum that poetic form is always already mediated, the prosodic typecasting of alliterative verse constituted an important form of mediation interceding between medieval poetic practice and modern ears. However, such typecasting emerged after 1450 as a new (or newly important) form of mediation in the long alliterative tradition.

Conclusion : Literary History and the History of Prosody

At the turn of the seventeenth century and for some time afterwards, alliterative verse was hardly ever read or studied. Medieval studies as a field of historical inquiry got underway in the sixteenth century. However, the focus of the earliest publications was on Old English prose (Graham 2000). Individual manuscript codices of medieval English verse, such as the Junius manuscript of Old English poetry and the Percy Folio of Middle English poetry, would not be mobilized as historical evidence until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After 1700, the story of alliterative verse and the story of alliterative metrics intertwined and reinforced one another, as successive generations of prosodists sought to make sense of the form, history, and cultural meaning of a defunct English meter. Anyone who proposes to say anything about alliterative verse today is necessarily heir to a literary history as well as a history of prosodic study.

A contemporary student of verse whose work particularly reflects the vicissitudes of literary history and the history of prosody (albeit malgré lui ) is the poet-critic James Fenton (Jones 2010: 1009-1011). In the opening of his Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Fenton excludes Old English poetry from consideration on the grounds that “[i]t is somebody else’s poetry” (1). Fenton confides, “I can’t accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare” (1). He goes on to reject Middle English poetry as well, though “[w]ith Chaucer we are much nearer home” (2). Predictably, Fenton’s chronological dividing line between “somebody else’s poetry” and its unstated opposite, ‘our poetry,’ coincides with the English Reformation. Such schematic periodization takes literary history back to the brave new world of Puttenham, who opined in his Arte of English Poesie that “beyond that time [ i.e. , the reigns of Edward III and Richard II] there is litle or nothing worth commendation to be founde written in this arte [ i . e ., verse]” (48).

For Puttenham, the reasons for the irrelevance of pre-1327 English poetry were (explicitly) political, intellectual, legal, linguistic, and (implicitly) racial. He writes of “the late Normane conquest, which had brought into this Realme much alteration both of our langage and lawes, and there withall a certain martiall barbarousnes, whereby the study of all good learning was so much decayd, as long time after no man or very few entended to write in any laudable science” (48). In 1589 this was a powerful new insight into the shape of English literary history. Indeed, Puttenham’s is one of the earliest attempts to constitute English literary history as a discrete field of inquiry. By 2002 Fenton could activate the same discourses of nation, language, and race without identifying them as such, except to remark that “English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins” (1). Moreover, Puttenham’s own milieu has become for Fenton the decisive watershed, further aligning the putatively spasmodic history of English poetry with the consolidation of the discourses on which that history rests.

If the rationale for Fenton’s periodization of English poetry is explicitly linguistic, it is also implicitly metrical: he favorably compares Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde , composed in pentameter, to the alliterative Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . The latter is “baffling and comprehensible by turns” (Fenton 2002: 1), the former “much nearer home, both linguistically and in terms of poetic practice” (2). Fenton’s presentism here echoes an influential Old Historicist narrative that characterized alliterative poetry as a backwater tradition, drowning in the welter of new literary forms in the Age of Chaucer. As this essay has recounted, the alliterative tradition itself transcended such stereotypes, at least before 1450. In the thirteenth century, alliterative meter lost its position as the default English verse form. But this meter endured, and the poets who continued to use it produced some of the most memorable poetry of the medieval centuries. From the seventh to the sixteenth century, alliterative meter does not so much rise or fall as stay put: it plods.

Cursory as they are, Fenton’s remarks illustrate how the discipline of literary study, including prosody, can retrospectively simplify literary history and obscure the cultural stakes of poetic forms. Like Puttenham, Fenton compartmentalizes the poetic past into binaries: Anglo-Saxon and English, local and cosmopolitan, popular and literary, medieval and modern. Insistence on such binaries has ceased to be a feature of literary-critical discourse, yet their force continues to be felt in the organization of research fields and in critical judgments about individual texts or authors. Chaucer, to take the egregium exemplum , continues to occupy a central position in English studies precisely because he is (perceived to be) the most English, cosmopolitan, literary—in a word, modern—medieval British author. But, of course, Chaucer inaugurates a modern literary or linguistic tradition only from the retrospect of later centuries (Butterfield 2009; Cannon 1998: 179-220). This is not to say that modernity and modernization are simply foreign subjects for a medievalist historical poetics—as though there could ever have been a Middle Ages without two somethings to be in the middle of! Rather, study of medieval English verse must continually strive to unthink the inevitability of modern poetic categories while retracing, in many cases, the very histories that created those categories. For this reason, struggling with and against medieval English poetics is a useful exercise for medievalists and modernists alike.

This essay focused on the subset of early English poetry known as alliterative verse. It did so for the same reason that Fenton found Troilus and Criseyde “much nearer home” than Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Left turns and blind alleys in literary history have alienated modern commentators from the alliterative tradition, with the result that close study of alliterative meter captures the historical distance of medieval English literary culture with particular clarity. However, my emphasis on poetic practice applies more generally to the study of early English poetry. By the fourteenth century, alliterative meter was one of many untheorized English verse forms. Chaucer, for example, was evidently able to compose thousands of lines of pentameter—an English meter he is usually credited with inventing—without ever naming or discussing this new meter. Two centuries earlier, the poets of Poema Morale ( c . 1180) and Ormulum (late twelfth c.) had drawn on Latin models to create what was then a radically new English meter, the septenary. Neither of these poems is intelligible outside the context of the history of medieval Latin writing, including the long tradition of Latin metrical treatises. Yet neither poem offers any commentary on its own metrical form, apart from two vague references in the Dedication of the Ormulum to rime ‘poem; meter’ (Cannon 2004: 93, 96). Although this essay focused on poetry in English, the other language traditions of medieval England (French and Latin, but also Norse and Welsh) each enabled historically significant connections and disjunctures between poetic practice and literary theory. All in all, the case of medieval verse reveals how much larger the history of poetry is than the history of prosodic study in the English tradition.

In conclusion, a word on the methodological implications of the kind of historical poetics modeled in this essay. The disciplinary formation of literary studies is often understood as a vacillation between form and history: an Old Historicism, keyed to political history, coexisted with German-style philology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the valorization of the literary text as a self-contained object in the New Criticism, followed by the revaluation of history in the New Historicism and various strands of cultural studies—or so the story goes (more nuanced accounts: Attridge 2008; Liu 1989; Strier 2002). Newer critical approaches to literature synthesize form and history by retracing the shapes of particular historical series, such as the history of the material book or the history of contact between English and other language traditions. In one sense, the present essay adds momentum to the cyclicity of critical history by joining recent calls for a new formalism that would return the focus of literary studies to literary form while affirming the theoretical and ideological critiques of the past forty years (Cohen 2007; Levine 2006; Levinson 2007; Loesberg 1999; Marshall and Buchanan 2011). In another sense, this essay has sought to transcend the formalism/historicism dichotomy by reading poetic form as an important kind of historical practice. One salutary feature of the term ‘historical poetics’ is that it connects form and history inextricably.

The story of early English poetry is neither one of decay and neglect nor of the inevitable triumph of a language or a culture. That this story unfolded for centuries without the help of a movement or a school or a theory, political, intellectual, or literary, suggests the inadequacy of some traditional literary-historical terms of engagement. Specifically, the conversation about the historical contextualization of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English poetics, recently reinvigorated by Jackson and Prins and taken up in turn by Culler, Jarvis, Martin, and others, needs to acknowledge the historicity of its subject and its methods. Generalizations about Poetry with a capital ‘P,’ or about the present-day study of its forms and histories, can be sharpened by taking early English poetry into consideration. In this essay, I identified two broad domains for reconstructing what was thinkable in medieval English verse: metrical practice and metrical perception. The key insight afforded by study of alliterative verse history is that practice and perception are separate domains, whose intermittent cooperation should be discovered through theorization and close reading rather than projected from the study of one onto the study of the other. Recognition that modern questions often fail to illuminate medieval meters is the first step toward a more capacious historical poetics. As foil or as precursor, medieval verse can help specify the historicity of modern English meters, modern prosodic metadiscourse, and the contemporary study of both.

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Kennedy, Ruth. “‘A Bird in Bishopswood’: Some Newly-Discovered Lines of Alliterative Verse from the Late Fourteenth Century.”  Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle , ed. Myra Stokes and T. L. Burton, 71-87. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987.

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————. “Some Unnoticed Constraints on the A-Verse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight .”  Approaches to the Metres of Alliterative Verse , ed. Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter, 41-57. Leeds: Leeds Studies in English, 2009.

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————. Forthcoming-a. “Alliterative Meter after 1450: The Vision of William Banastre .” Aspects of Early English Poetic Culture: Studies in Honour of Geoffrey R. Russom , ed. Lindy Brady and M. J. Toswell. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.

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[1] Thanks are due to Marshall Brown, Ian Cornelius, and Bruce Holsinger for commenting on earlier drafts of this essay, and to participants in the Stanford Workshop in Poetics for helpful discussion of a draft of this essay in October 2015.

[2] Like other Early Middle English alliterative poets, Lawman makes extensive use of internal rhyme between half-lines but not end rhyme between long lines.

[3] Old English poetry was laid out as prose. Over the course of the thirteenth century, lineated format became the norm for English poetry, though prose format remained an (increasingly uncommon) option well into the sixteenth century. See Weiskott 2013a: 41-2.

[4] For alliterating stanzaic verse, the overlap between perception and practice was just as significant but located in a different region of literary genre: most late alliterating stanzaic poems are affiliated with the genre of ‘flyting’ or verbal dueling.

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Russian Formalism: An Essay

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 17, 2016 • ( 10 )

Russian Formalism, which emerged around 1915 and flourished in the 1920s, was associated with the OPOJAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) and with the Moscow Linguistic Society (one of the leading figures of which was Roman Jakobson) and Prague Linguistic Circle (established in 1926, with major figures as Boris Eichenbaum and Viktor Shklovsky) The school derives its name from “form”, as these critics studied the form of literary work rather than its content, emphasizing on the “formal devices” such as rhythm, metre, rhyme, metaphor, syntax or narrative technique.

Formalism views literature as a special mode of language and proposes a  fundamental opposition between poetic/literary language and the practical/ordinary language. While ordinary language serves the purpose of communication, literary language is self-reflexive, in that it offers readers a special experience by drawing attention to its “formal devices”, which Roman Jakobson calls “literariness’ — that which makes a given work a literary work. Jan Mukarovsky described literariness as consisting in the “maximum of foregrounding of the utterance”, and the primary aim of such foregrounding, as Shklovsky described in his Art as Technique , is to “estrange or “defamiliarize”. Thus literary language is ordinary language deformed and made strange. Literature, by forcing us into a dramatic awareness of language, refreshes our habitual perceptions and renders objects more perceptible.

Though Formalism focused primarily on poetry, later Shklovsky, Todorov and Propp analysed the language of fiction, and the way in which it produced the effect of defamiliarization. They looked at the structure of a narrative and explored how elements like plot and characterization contributed to the narrative’s effect. Propp studied folk narratives () and Shklovsky treated Sterne’s Tristram Shandy , as a novel that parodied earlier conventions of writing.

Jakobson and Todorov were influential in introducing Formalist concepts and methods into French Structuralism. Formalism was strongly opposed by some Marxist critics, proponents of Reader Response theory, Speech Act theory and New Historicism – all reject the view that there is a sharp and definable distinction between ordinary language and literary language.

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The Poetics in its Aristotelian context

Rebecca bensen cain , oklahoma state university. [email protected].

Preview [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context ( PAC ), is a collection of papers on Aristotle’s Poetics , presenting an expansive set of issues brought together to promote methods of contextualizing the Poetics within Aristotle’s corpus. It contains an introduction, bibliography, index locorum, general index and index of proper names. The papers reflect current work from authors who are conversant with Aristotle’s views on tragic poetry and understand the complexities involved in linking major themes of the Poetics to Aristotle’s philosophical positions as presented in his other treatises. One of the merits of PAC is that the authors are comfortable working, in a mutually reinforcing way, in the related fields of classics, literary theory, philosophy, and history. The volume will prove to be of lasting value to Aristotelian scholars as well as to specialists in Platonic studies who may be pleased to find that subtler approaches are taken with regard to Plato’s critique of the arts and his influence on Aristotle’s thought.

In their Introduction, the editors, Pierre Destrée and Dana L. Munteanu, pose the question: “How Aristotelian is Aristotle’s Poetics —a treatise often perceived as an oddity among its author’s own works?” (1). The question serves to guide the reader’s expectations that the twelve essays of PAC will “provide some answers to this question,” as well as provoke further responses from scholars in the future. They explain that the purpose of the volume is “to integrate aspects of the Poetics into the broader Aristotelian philosophy.” They point out that the procedures of contextualization presented throughout the volume are distinct from the way Aristotle’s treatise has been approached contextually, in the past, which was to deal with difficult concepts, clarify and try to resolve problems of interpretation, and address controversial issues.

The editors do not provide a specific meaning for “contextualization” nor does it seem, upon reflection, that they should be expected to do so. Instead, the main concern is to outline how the authors carry out the process of contextualizing the Poetics on a given topic in conjunction with Aristotle’s biological works, the Politics , his ethical treatises, the Rhetoric , his views of language and logic, and the wider influences on Aristotle’s thinking in relation to his predecessors and culture. Given the vast scope of the Aristotelian corpus, the plan for PAC is “programmatic” rather systematic (2-3). Not all areas of Aristotle’s philosophy are discussed. Instead, each author pursues a topic or set of themes and branches out in one or more directions suitable to their argument. Moreover, the editors suggest that the best way to understand the Poetics is to treat it as a distinct field of inquiry that presupposes and draws upon the philosophical and scientific views, methodological principles and strategies, which Aristotle set down in his other treatises. In this light, the editors explain why readers ought to consider Aristotle’s reasons for presenting the poetic arts as he does, rather than assess his view in terms of how well he responds to Plato’s critique of poetry or lament Aristotle’s failure to satisfy modern tastes with regard to ancient Greek theatre and stage performance (3-8).

The twelve papers in PAC are divided into three parts with chapters related to specific areas that illustrate methods of applying Aristotelian contexts to the Poetics. Part 1, entitled “Aristotle’s aesthetics: poetry and other arts—tradition and innovation,” has five papers. In the first chapter, Andrea Capra argues that Aristotle gave a technical meaning to the term muthos which he used to signify the tragic plot as a compositional structure that is unified and coherent. This new use is a radical break from Plato’s understanding of muthos and its traditional associations with poetic story-telling. Capra claims that Aristotle’s biological approach to tragedy shaped his analysis of it as a kind of living organism with the plot-structure as its “soul” (28). In support of his interpretation, he presents a set of passages from the Poetics and the biological works, in which he compares similar phrases and patterns of reasoning. Next, Hallvard Fossheim discusses the significance of the concept of to kalon (“noble,” “fine,” or “beautiful”) in Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethical and socio-political writings. He reviews the psychological dynamics between thumos , the spirited part of the soul, and its desire for the kalon . He discusses cases of standard usage in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s ethical works and carefully compares them with Aristotle’s restricted use of kalon and its cognates in the Poetics . Fossheim argues that Aristotle decidedly modified his use of kalon and applied it primarily to poetic craftsmanship and its products.

David Konstan considers five possible ways to understand the properly aesthetic dimension of fear and pity, preferring the one connected directly to the action of the complete story, the plot-structure constituted as a single whole from start to finish (59). He argues that this connection is vital not only with regard to fear and pity as aesthetically tragic emotions, but also “whatever other emotions might correspond to genres such as comedy” (61). In the next essay, Franco Trivigno provides a conceptual, moral and psychological analysis of phthonos (envy, or malice, or both). He suggests that Aristotle would have identified phthonos as part of the cathartic experience appropriate to comedy. Starting with a pattern taken from Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in Poetics 6, he builds a best-case scenario using Poetics 4-5, the relevant chapters on emotions in the Rhetoric , and references to the ethical works. He proposes to meet three criteria, historical, moral-psychological, and theoretical, to guide his investigation. Part of his project is to provide a reconstructed account of Plato’s view of comedy and the ridiculous in the Philebus (47e-50a). He contends that, despite differences between Plato’s emphasis on the pleasurable side of phthonos (as malice) and Aristotle’s account of the painful side of phthonos (as envy) in Rhetoric II.9, both philosophers are referring to the same thing (74). Trivigno ends on an optimistic note. In his view, there are enough resources available to provide a reasonable basis for reconstructing an Aristotelian theory of comedy.

Part I ends with Elsa Bouchard’s multi-leveled investigation of Aristotle’s explicit use of painting as a paradigm for poetic art. Aristotle uses it in three contexts: first, technical, with regard to skill in composition; second, regarding moral, cognitive, and educational domains; and third, regarding artistic autonomy and the intrinsic value of poetry and painting. Her strategy is to specify within each context the extent to which Aristotle relies on the visual arts as a source for his theory of poetry .

Part 2 is entitled “Poetics, politics, and ethics: links and independence,” and contains four papers. Pierre Destrée and Thornton Lockwood develop their views on the long-standing question of whether Aristotle’s so-called depoliticized account of tragedy ought to be reassessed. This reassessment is achieved, in Destrée’s view, by emphasizing Aristotle’s account of tragic suffering (in Poetics 14), his normative conception of politics, and his views on family, friends, and community ( philia ) and their relation to the polis . Lockwood takes a different tack to reexamine the core issues related to music and civic education in Politics 7-8. He formulates a set of working principles to understand Aristotle’s position on the value of music, its impact on moral education, Aristotle’s negative attitude toward performance as a factor in the arts, and the question of what constitutes “truly noble leisure,” according to Aristotle (135).

The next two papers, by Dana Munteanu and Valeria Cinaglia, address features of Aristotle’s account of characterization. Munteanu considers Aristotle’s lack of detail with regard to tragic characters designated as “better than us,” in contrast to  his description of comic characters who are “worse than us” ( Poetics 2 and 6). Her meticulous approach to characterization and Aristotle’s appeals to painters and their styles helps to clarify, among other things, the third class of characters designated as “like us.”

Cinaglia develops the basis for a comparison between “comic error” ( Poetics 5) and the sorts of errors made by morally weak persons as described by Aristotle in the relevant chapters of NE 7. Her argument involves several layers of discussion with regard to the moral implications of the errors typically made by comic characters, as people who are not vicious (except to the extent that they are ridiculous, ugly, or shameful), and are prone to excesses in desire or passion. She illustrates these points well with reference to Menander’s characters and style of comedy (169). Given Aristotle’s concern with character in tragedy and the plausibility that a person’s temperament and motivations will dictate their actions ( Poetics 17), she argues that Aristotle would have applied the same criteria to comedy as he does to tragedy (172).

Part 3, entitled “Language and content: poetic puzzles in philosophical context,” has two papers. With regard to poetic style and Aristotle’s theory of metaphor ( Poetics 21-22), Thomas Cirillo brings out the contrast between Aristotle’s intention “to amplify the creative and aesthetic appeal of a poem or speech,” and the “logical rigor” associated with the hierarchical ordering of genus and species in the Categories . According to Cirillo, Aristotle was willing to bend “the rules of his classificatory hierarchy,” in order to create “vivid expressions that bring the action of poetry before the eyes of the audience” (185). An interesting feature of the paper is Cirillo’s discussion of “flexible predication” as a way of describing Aristotle’s willingness to substitute a species term for the genus (195).

Silvia Carli reassesses Aristotle’s apparent privileging of poetry over historia , with the goal of showing what is wrong with a simplified approach to Poetics 9 and a narrow reading of Poetics 23 on the part of scholars who take Aristotle to be dismissive of historical works. She argues that developing an adequate account of Aristotle’s view of historia as a type of preliminary inquiry, along with a clearer understanding of historiography, are useful correctives for dealing with the problems generated by a “one-sided” interpretation of Aristotle’s contrast between poetry and historia (215).

Malcolm Heath’s essay addresses specific concerns about contextualization and brings them to bear on a key question about the intrinsic value of poetry. There are three reasons for situating Aristotle’s Poetics in what Heath calls a “global Aristotelian context” (224). The first is straightforward: Aristotle is a philosopher with an enormous range of interdisciplinary interests which he used as resources in conducting an inquiry. Second, the Poetics is a technical treatise about poetry as a productive art. The function of the poet as a skilled maker is to produce a product which can be judged in terms of its excellence. As part of this discussion, Heath calls attention to Aristotle’s rule about keeping different fields of inquiry separate and treating them as partially autonomous, while at the same time acknowledging their “interconnectedness” (229). Striking the “right balance” of these features is an obvious challenge for reading the Poetics contextually.

The third reason ties together two central points about reading the Poetics “in a global Aristotelian context” (232). Granting Aristotle’s intention to stay within the limits of a technical treatise on tragic poetry, it is unlikely that clear answers about Aristotle’s view on the value of poetry will be found in the Poetics . Yet, we want to know how Aristotle would respond to the question: “what contribution does poetry make to living well?” (233). In Heath’s view, finding an adequate answer requires reading the Poetics in a “wider Aristotelian context.” As part of this project, Heath suggests taking an anthropological perspective regarding human behavior and motivation, a perspective that shows how poetry is rooted in natural human inclinations and the pleasure we take in viewing mimetic art ( Poetics 4) . Heath proceeds by noting the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. He recalls Aristotle’s argument that there must be a final end worth choosing for itself, since an infinite regress would result if all ends were chosen for the sake of something else ( N.E . 1.2, 1094a18-22). Next, Heath draws a comparison between music and poetry. He notes that, in Politics 8.3, Aristotle recognizes the value of music both for educating the young and for the sake of “intellectual enjoyment in leisure” (1338a20-22).To conclude, Heath cites the Protrepticus to illustrate how  Aristotle responds to critics who challenge the usefulness of philosophy, as if it could not be of value in itself. The point here is that engaging in philosophical study is similar to enjoying Olympic Games, watching dramatic plays or listening to music, all of which are “appropriate objects of appreciative attention in cultivated leisure” (235).

Authors and Titles

Pierre Destrée and Dana L. Munteanu, “Introduction.” PART 1. Aristotle’s aesthetics: poetry and other arts—tradition and innovation. 1. Andrea Capra, “Poetry and biology: the anatomy of tragedy.” 2. Hallvard J. Fossheim, “ To kalon and the experience of art.” 3. David Konstan, “Aesthetic emotions.” 4. Franco V. Trivigno, “Was phthonos a comedic emotion for Aristotle? On the pleasure and moral psychology of laughter.” 5. Elsa Bouchard, “Painting as an aesthetic paradigm.” PART 2. Poetics, politics, and ethics: links and independence. 6. Pierre Destrée, “Family bounds, political community, and tragic pathos .” 7. Thornton Lockwood, “Is there a Poetics in the Politics ?” 8. Dana L. Munteanu, “Varieties of characters: the better, the worse, and the like.” 9. Valeria Cinaglia, “The ethical context of Poetics 5: comic error and lack of self-control.” PART 3. Language and content: poetic puzzles in philosophical context. 10. Thomas Cirillo, “Taxonomic flexibility: metaphor, genos , and eidos .” 11. Silvia Carli, “Poetry and historia .” Afterword 12. Malcolm Heath, “Reading the Poetics in context.”

The Poetic Principle: Poe on Truth, Love, Reason, and the Human Impulse for Beauty

By maria popova.

Arguably the most compelling answer ever given comes from Edgar Allan Poe in his essay “The Poetic Principle,” which he penned at the end of his life. It was published posthumously in 1850 and can be found in the fantastic Library of America volume Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews ( public library ), which also gave us Poe’s priceless praise of marginalia .

Poe begins with an unambiguous definition of the purpose of poetry:

A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.

And yet, he argues, this isn’t necessarily how we judge poetic merit — he takes a prescient jab against our present “A for effort” cultural mindset to remind us that the measure of genius isn’t dogged time investment but actual creative quality:

It is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art, rather by the impression it makes — by the effect it produces — than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another

(It’s interesting that he uses the term “sustained effort” more than a century and a half before the findings of modern psychology, which has upgraded the term to “deliberate practice” to illustrate the qualitative difference in the effort necessary for achieving genius-level skill .)

After discussing a couple of examples of poems that elevate the soul, Poe takes a stab at what he considers to be the most perilous cultural misconception about poetry and its aim, a fallacy that profoundly betrays the poetic spirit:

It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea; and we Bostonians, very especially, have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem’s sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force: — but the simple fact is, that, would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

He goes on to outline a dispositional diagram of the human mind, a kind of conceptual phrenology that segments out the trifecta of mental faculties:

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which, in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms: — waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity — her disproportion — her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious — in a word, to Beauty.

(I wonder whether Susan Sontag was thinking about Poe when she wrote in her diary that “intelligence … is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.” )

Beauty, Poe argues, is the highest of those human drives, and the domain where poetry dwells:

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. […] The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.

Acknowledging that the poetic sentiment may manifest itself in forms other than poetry — art, sculpture, dance, architecture — he points to music (“Music”) as an especially sublime embodiment of the Poetic Principle:

It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact . We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development.

(Again, I wonder whether Poe was on Susan Sontag’s mind when she wrote that “music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts,” or on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s when she exclaimed, “Without music I should wish to die. Even poetry, Sweet Patron Muse forgive me the words, is not what music is.” )

Poe returns to the subject of beauty as the ultimate source of this “Poetic Sentiment” in all its varied expressions with an argument that rings all the more poignant and stirring today, in an age when we question whether pleasure alone can make literature worthwhile . Poe writes:

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul , which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore — using the word as inclusive of the sublime — I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes: — no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: — but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.

He then offers a precise, unapologetic definition of poetry:

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty . Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth. […] While [the Poetic Principle] itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart — or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary — Love … is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before, we experience, at once, the true poetical effect — but this effect is preferable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony manifest.

Poe ends with an exquisite living manifestation of his Poetic Principle — a sort of prose poem about poetry itself:

We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven — in the volutes of the flower — in the clustering of low shrubberies — in the waving of the grain-fields — in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue distance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silver rivers — in the repose of sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds — in the harp of Æolus — in the sighing of the night-wind — in the repining voice of the forest — in the surf that complains to the shore — in the fresh breath of the woods — in the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in the lustre of her eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments — in her burning enthusiasms — in her gentle charities — in her meek and devotional endurances — but above all — ah, far above all — he kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty — of her love.

Find more of Poe’s timeless wisdom in Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews and complement it with his meditation on marginalia and Lou Reed on the challenge of setting Poe to music .

— Published January 28, 2014 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/28/edgar-allan-poe-poetic-principle/ —

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A Summary and Analysis of Aristotle’s Poetics

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Aristotle was the first theorist of theatre – so his Poetics  is the origin and basis of all subsequent theatre criticism. His Poetics was written in the 4 th century BC, some time after 335 BC.

The important thing is that when Aristotle’s writing his Poetics , Greek theatre was not in its heyday, but was already past its peak, and Aristotle was writing a good 100 years after the Golden Age of Greek tragic theatre – so in many ways it’s like a contemporary critic writing about the plays of Chekhov or Oscar Wilde. It’s past, the writers of the plays are already long dead, but they’ve survived and Aristotle is writing about them and highlighting their importance.

What follows are some notes towards a summary and analysis of, and introduction to, Aristotle’s Poetics – the first great work of literary criticism in the Western world.

So, what does Aristotle say? ‘Tragedy imitates the actions of the best people in society, and comedy the worst sorts of people in society’. His Poetics is really an attempt to analyze those features that make some tragedies more successful than others. What makes a great tragedy? His essay is an early example of Empiricism – a philosophical tradition which regards observation of sense experience as the basis of knowledge. Observation: we need to remember the theoros of both ‘theory’ and ‘theatre’: the act of adopting the role of the spectator in order to analyse something.

So he’s not just going to sit at home and think about theatre, he’s going to go and watch it to get a sense of how it works. Aristotle is very concerned with the knowledge gained by the spectator via his experience of theatre.

Aristotle’s definition of tragedy might be summed up as: an imitation of an action which has serious and far reaching consequences. Nothing trivial, in other words, which is the domain of comedy. Comedy deals in the trivial and the inconsequential. For this reason, tragedy must deal with the lives of great men because only their actions will be of consequence to the larger community. (Arthur Miller would later disagree , arguing that modern tragedy can and should depict the lives of ordinary people.)

Misfortune versus tragedy – there is unsurprisingly a very big gap between the way we view life and the viewpoint of the ancient Greeks. We place a great deal more value on the individual, but to the ancient Greeks, individuality was seen as a negative thing because it was anti-social, which they believed would lead to social breakdown. So it’s all about joining people, but also sort of trying to make them all the same, with the same ideas and adherence to the city-state, so they’d behave themselves.

Plot is the most important element of a tragedy: the sequence of events and actions in a play. A tragedy should have only one plot and all of its action should relate to this plot. Aristotle uses the analogy of painting to show how, in theatre, plot is far more important than character:   ‘It is much the same case as with painting: the most beautiful pigments smeared on at random will not give as much pleasure as a black-and-white outline picture.’

Character is second to plot in terms of its importance. Tragedy imitates an action performed by a person primarily for the sake of the actions they perform, rather than out of any interest in the psychology of character: ‘For tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action, and they have moral quality in accordance with their characters but are happy or unhappy in accordance with their actions; hence they are not active in order to imitate their characters, but they include the characters along with the actions for the sake of the latter.

Thus the structure of events, the plot, is the goal of tragedy, and the goal is the greatest thing of all.’ What Aristotle is saying here is, essentially, that the actions of the character influence the character, so action – plot – comes first because it colours the character.

A character’s aims   must be good; they must be appropriate; there should be a likeness to human nature in general. They should be consistent. Even if the person being imitated is inconsistent, Aristotle says, he must be inconsistent in a consistent fashion. So if a character is mad and so behaves in a disordered fashion, that’s fine – but he can’t be mad in one scene and then sane in the next.

The protagonist is, of course, the main character. His actions are most significant to the plot (remember plot is primary over character). All of the protagonist’s or tragic hero’s habits must tend toward the good, except for one – the hero’s hamartia  or tragic flaw. That’s not going to tend towards the good: indeed, that’s got to mess everything up for the hero.

The Unities of time, place, and action were of central importance in Greek theatre. All action is interconnected. Tragedy will represent a complete action – a clear beginning, middle and end. The protagonist’s hamartia is the only impurity that exists in his (or, in the case of Sophocles’ Antigone, her) make-up. The protagonist should be written in such a way that the audience is motivated to empathize or identify with him because the overall aim of tragedy as a genre is to excite pity and fear in the spectator. Pity and fear will be provoked only if the protagonist’s fortunes go from good to bad.

A change in fortune should come about as a direct result of an action motivated by the protagonist’s tragic flaw. This is frequently hubris or pride. The change needs to be logical and to have a clear cause, rather than be accidental.

Oedipus Rex is Aristotle’s example of a great tragedy. It’s arguably one of a handful of the most influential literary texts ever written, along with Hamlet and certain passages from the Bible. And yet to give you an idea of how much great Greek drama we have lost – that has not survived down the ages – Oedipus Rex only came second at that year’s City Dionysia. First prize went to a play by the nephew of Aeschylus. We’ve offered a short recap of the plot of  Oedipus Rex   here.

The play is bound up with the idea of fate. It’s out of Oedipus’ control that he will kill his father and marry his mother, as this has already been decreed by the gods. Therefore it’s a little unfair to describe his ‘tragic flaw’ as his own fault. So, that deepens our sympathy for Oedipus, since what happens came about thanks to accident, or to fate – neither of which was ever in his control.

However, it’s possible to argue that Oedipus’ tragic flaw is his pride . Pride has led Oedipus to kill his father, albeit without realising the man he kills is  his father. This results in his mother, Jocasta, being widowed and free to remarry. This is the moment of his reversal in fortune, which leads Oedipus to recognize his error or flaw: this happens when Oedipus discovers he killed his father, which led to him unwittingly marrying his mother. This precipitates the hero’s fall.

Following this reversal of fortune, we have the reparation : in the best of tragedy, the character suffers the consequences of his mistake. In Oedipus Rex , Oedipus blinds himself and is ostracized from the state; Jocasta, even though the fault was Oedipus’, hangs herself. Tragedy must end on a note of equilibrium. The social order must be restored and reaffirmed.

This isn’t the happiest of endings; so, what’s the aim of tragedy? To teach you how to be a better person. This means being a good (Greek) citizen. Because the spectator empathizes with the protagonist, he will be led to recognize his own tragic flaw whatever that may be – and he will want to root it out so that he does not end in the same way as the fallen hero. Aristotle’s term for this is catharsis : the spectator should be purged of undesirable elements that prevent his happiness.

The flaw is both individual and social – an undesirable element that would lead a person to go against the laws of land. The spectator can still empathize with the hero because he is not an unregenerate figure. We pity Oedipus’ decline because, except for one or two faults, he is basically a good man. Thus, what happens to him is tragic. The tragic element also arises from his status in society – because he is the king and what happens to him will have wide social repercussions.

We might summarise the structure of tragedy as follows: beginning = prosperity of hero. Middle = stimulation of hamartia – tragic flaw; peripetiae – reversal of fortune; anagnorisis – moment of realization. End = catastrophe – hero suffers consequences. Catharsis – spectator motivated to purge his own tragic flaw.

If you enjoyed this summary of Aristotle’s  Poetics , you might also enjoy our brief history of tragedy .

3 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Aristotle’s Poetics”

I had to grapple with Poetics and discourses such as those in the postgraduate classes of English Literature. What is left of the labour of those olden days is hamartia, anagnorisis and perepeteia… Such powerful concepts! Personally though I didn’t subscribe to the Aristotelian concept of greatness, for which I was put to task by the Professor Emeritus. The anagnorisis hit me a bit late, you see. Thanks for the crisp recap.

This is essential reading – summarising A’s/translators? dry style like this is a worthy feat. Greek drama 100 years past bits peak – time scales like these boggle our contemporary senses of time.

Might it be that Ancient Greek sense of time was slower? Ie that change was slower to establish: 100 years then meant a lot was still on-going throughout the period, rather than superceded? Just thinking.

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