Poetry and the idea of progress, 1760-1790 / John Regan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Regan, John, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--18th century--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Progress in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (211 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London, England : Anthem Press, 2018.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781783087747

1783087749