The Four Ages of Poetry
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The Four Ages of Poetry, an essay of 1820 by Thomas Love Peacock, was both a significant study of poetry in its own right, and the stimulus for Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry.{{Cite book |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008653971 |title=Peacock's Four ages of poetry; Shelley's Defence of poetry; Browning's Essay on Shelley |last=Brett-Smith |first=H. F. B. |date=1921 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |location=Boston}}
Setting and tone
Much of the ‘Four Ages’ is an attack from a utilitarian standpoint on the Romantic poets with whom Peacock was closely associated, and whom indeed he defended publicly from criticism elsewhere.M H Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford 1971) p. 356 But, ever the parodist, Peacock's argument cut both ways. As M. H. Abrams put it, “If he was a poet who mocked at poets from a Utilitarian frame of satirical reference, he was a Utilitarian who turned into ridicule the belief in utility and the march of intellect”.M H Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford 1971) p. 126 Nevertheless, while humorous, Peacock's essay also raised several serious critical points.D Karlin, The Figure of the Singer (2013) p. 43
Poetic origins
Peacock offered a mocking account of how poets originally developed a claim to be historians or moralists, seeing the first poetry as created by a bard “always ready to celebrate the strength of [the king’s] arm, being first duly inspired by that of his liquor”.Quoted in M H Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford 1971) p. 127 As the inflater of royal ‘credit’, the poet was thus placed as precursor to contemporary speculators in paper money and financial credit.R Mitchell, Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era (2013) p. 196
Primitivism
"Mr Scott digs up the poachers and cattle-stealers of the ancient border. Lord Byron cruises for thieves and pirates on the shores of the Morea….Mr Wordsworth picks up village legends from old women".Pacock, quoted in D Hay, Young Romantics (London 2011) p. 207 Peacock concluded that the present-day poet was a regressive influence opposed to progress and development, and (herein Peacock was outdoing Jeremy Bentham himself) of no utilitarian merit whatever.D Hay, Young Romantics (London 2011) p. 207
See also
References
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{{Wikisource|The Four Ages of Poetry}}
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Category:Essays in literary theory
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