English Lyric In The Age Of Reason PDF Download

Excerpt from English Lyric: In the Age of Reason In the following pages I have attempted to trace the course of English Lyric in the Age of Reason. The days when "influences" and "tendencies" were supreme in literary criticism are now gone, and it is well. A much-needed protest has been raised against this - "chatter about 'schools, ' influences 'revivals, ' 'revolts, ' 'tendencies, ' 'reactions.'" But dislike of one extravagance should not lead us into another and opposite one. Personality, temperament, the individual must always be the most important factor in any writer's work. Nevertheless, that personality is inevitably moulded by the writer's mental and material environment. The works of his predecessors may affect him, but above all, save in exceptional circumstances, he will be affected by the "spirit" of his own age. The "spirit of the age" is a very elusive ghost, often indeed a much misunderstood one; but that there is, over and above the individual, a general influence which almost invariably leaves its impress upon the works of contemporary writers is proved by the fact that we can at sight distinguish an Elizabethan lyric from a modern one. Nor is the chief difference due to a changed language. The fundamental change is intellectual, a difference of attitude, of thought. Change of thought is in general reflected in literature, and produces a roughly parallel "evolution" in poetry and prose. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.