(Download) "Byron and the Scottish Spenserians (George Gordon, Lord Byron) (Critical Essay)" by Studies in Romanticism " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Byron and the Scottish Spenserians (George Gordon, Lord Byron) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Studies in Romanticism
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 226 KB
Description
Poems in Series "I SING THE SOFA," BEGINS THE TASK. COWPER WAS ASSIGNED THIS TOPIC by a lady fond of blank verse: "He obeyed; and having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and pursuing the train of thought, to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth at length, instead of the trifle which he at first intended, a serious affair--a volume" (2:113). (1) Childe Harold, which likewise "makes no pretension to regularity," also begins its meandering course in burlesque (2: 4). (2) These opening frames, Miltonic and Spenserian, set the pitch for the digressive songs to follow. Their peculiar resonance may fail faint on ears more familiar with Milton and Spenser than with minor poetry. Cowper evokes an obscure series of burlesque odes imitating John Philips' The Splendid Shilling, Byron a series of poems on progress developed out of James Thornson's Castle of Indolence. A survey of the Thomson series will elucidate Byron's skills as a reader and emulator as he used insights gleaned from Thomson's Scottish imitators to vault to attention by challenging national confidence in the wake of the Peninsular War. The irregularity of Childe Harold was not without a plan.