Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 1760-90 - Hardcover

Regan, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783087722 ISBN 13: 9781783087723

Publisher: Anthem Press, 2018

Synopsis

Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 1760–1790 explores under-examined relationships between poetry and historiography in the eighteenth century, deepening our understanding of the relationship between poetry and ideas of progress with sustained attention to aesthetic, historical, antiquarian and prosodic texts from the period. Its central contention is that the historians and theorists of the time did not merely instrumentalize verse in the construction of narratives of human progress, but that the aesthetics of verse had a kind of agency – it determined the character of – historical knowledge of the period. With numerous examples from poems and writing on poetics, Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 1760–1790 shows how the poetic line became a site at which one could make assertions about human development even as one experienced the expressive effects of metred language.

About this title

Review

‘This bold and fundamentally progressive contribution to current debates in poetics will not only bring a rich, historically informed perspective to the field, it will also prompt a more humane and humanly responsive interrogation of the resources of literary art.’
―Peter de Bolla, Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics, University of Cambridge, UK

‘This splendidly far-reaching book brings together two intellectual strands that are seldom taken together: eighteenth-century prosody and the “stadial” theory of human development. Through a series of bravura readings of canonical and obscured thinkers, Regan brilliantly demonstrates the centrality of verse culture to larger philosophical debates, while complicating the perceived virtues of “polish” and “refinement” as they emerged within neo-classicism.’
―Ewan James Jones, Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, UK; Fellow and Director of Studies, Downing College, UK

Book Description

An exploration of under-examined relationships between poetry and historiography between 1760 and 1790.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1783087722
• ISBN 13: 9781783087723
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 222