The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poet's Poet, by Elizabeth Atkins

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Title: The Poet's Poet

Author: Elizabeth Atkins

Posting Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #7928]
Release Date: April, 2005
First Posted: June 1, 2003

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE POET'S POET

Essays on the Character and Mission of the Poet As Interpreted in
English Verse of the Last One Hundred and Fifty Years

By

ELIZABETH ATKINS, PH.D.

Instructor in English, University of Minnesota

TO

HARTLEY AND NELLY ALEXANDER

PREFACE

Utterances of poets regarding their character and mission have perhaps
received less attention than they deserve. The tacit assumption of the
majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the
last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no
means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the
part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of
aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer
of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the
poet's self-exposition must have interest for all students of Platonic
philosophy, inasmuch as Plato's famous challenge was directed only
incidentally to critics of poetry; primarily it was to Poetry herself,
whom he urged to make just such lyrical defense as we are to consider.

The method here employed is not to present exhaustively the substance of
individual poems treating of poets. Analysis of Wordsworth's _Prelude,_
Browning's _Sordello,_ and the like, could scarcely give more than a
re-presentation of what is already available to the reader in notes and
essays on those poems. The purpose here is rather to pass in review the
main body of such verse written in the last one hundred and fifty years.
We are concerned, to be sure, with pointing out idiosyncratic
conceptions of individual writers, and with tracing the vogue of passing
theories. The chief interest, however,