Poetry and poets of Transition age.

1. Poetry of the age of Transition
Continuance of the classical Tradition
and The Romantic reaction

2. Continuance of the Classical Tradition
• Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) and Churchill
(1731-64) were the two prominent poets of
the age of transition who kept alive the
classical tradition of Alexander Pope. Dr.
Johnson wrote little poetry, and whatever he
has left behind is satirical.

3. 1) Poetry of Dr. Johnson
His first poem was London(1738) which is
written in heroic couplet. His second poem is
satire – The vanity of human wishes (1749)
2) Charles Churchill
He was satirist and political writer. The
Rosciad (1761) is his most successful work. It is
long satire in heroic couplet. His other significant
poems are An Epistle to William Hogarth (1763),
The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral (1763)
and The Candidate(1764)

4. The Romantic Reaction (characteristics
of the romantic poetry)
• 1) Reaction against the school of Pope:
The Augustan principles of reason and
correctness came to be challenged on a broad
front, a new spirit was beginning to be felt in
poetry. Values which Pope and his followers had
discarded were coming into their own again.
Gradually the poets of this period began to break
away from the bondage of Pope. Thus there was
the protest against the bondage of rules, the
return to nature and the human heart.

5. • 2) Appreciation of Nature: The slogan of the
transitional poets was ‘A Return to Nature’- to the
real nature of earth and air, and not to the
bookish nature of the artificial pastoral of the
Windsor Forrest of pope. The pre-romantic poets
exhibited a genuine love for the beauties of
nature without introducing any mysticism in the
interpretation of nature like Wordsworth and
Shelly. The works of pre-romantic poets such as
Thomson, Collins, Burns, Gray reveals an intimate
knowledge and love of nature coming close to the
Wordsworthian love.

6. • 3) Emotional appeal: There was a readmission
of emotion, and even a personal emotion into
poetry. Emotion started taking the place of cold
intellectual appeal to reason. In the poetry of
the age we find the advent of sensibility- an
emotional sensitiveness that soon found
expression in literature and gradually merged
into the larger and deeper imaginative life of
the Romantic revival.

7. • 4) Country –life: There was a widening of interests
and the pre-romantic poets were not
circumscribed by the town-life and manners of the
school of Pope. Country life and a fresh interest in
man’s position in the world of nature began to be
asserted during this period.
• 5) Sympathy for the poor and the oppressed: An
enlightened sympathy for the poor and the
oppressed became a characteristic features of the
new school. In literature during this time the work
of Cowper, Burns, Crabbe and Gray perceive the
revolution that is taking place in the minds of men.

8. • 6) Interest in the Middle Ages: Interest in the Middle
Ages and in Celtic myths began to be felt and the
transitional poets turned their gaze on the past reviving
the hoary traditions of the Middle Ages which had
wrongly been dubbed as barbarous by Dryden, Pope and
Johnson. Now Gothic became term of admiration rather
than reproach.
• 7) Simplification of themes of poetry: There was a
radical simplification of the themes of poetry. There was
a quest for more elementary themes which sought
among the unsophisticated country folk rather than
amid the complexities of the culture and refinement.
They were choosing themes like rainbow, small element
of nature, solitary reaper, etc.

9. • 8) Reaction against the heroic couplet: There was
also a reaction against the poetic forms of the
Augustan age. The poets of new revival come
back in the old forms such as lyric and ballad.
Young, Collins and Gray also imitating the
Milton’s blank verses and earlier lyrical work.
Thus, these are the characteristics of
the romantic poetry. Now let’s know about the
pre romantic poets.

10. Pre-Romantic Poets
• 1) Thomas Gray(1716-1771): His poems divided
into three periods. First- Hymn to Adversity, Ode
to Spring, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
Second- Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,
The Progress of Poesy, The Bard. Third- The Fatal
Sisters, The descent of Odin.
• 2) Oliver Goldsmith(1728-1774): His two poems
are very famous : The Traveller(1764), it is a long
poem. The Deserted Village(1770)- in this the
voices so perfectly the revolt of the individual
man against institutions.

11. • 3) William Cowper(1731-1800): His first volume of
poems containing- The Progress of Error, Truth,
Table talk, etc. The task- it is a long poem written in
blank verse published in 1785.
• 4) Robert Burns (1759-1796): Poems Chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect(1786)- it is a little volume but great
book. It includes poems like The Cotter’s Saturday
Night, To a Mouse, To a Mountain Daisy, Man was
made of Mourn, The twa Dogs, Halloween. Some
of his miscellaneous poems- A man’s man for
a’that, The vision, Epistle to a young Friend,
Address to the Unco Guid, etc.

12. • 5) William Blake(1757-1828): Poetic sketches
published in 1783- is a collection of Blake’s
earliest poetry. Two later and better known
volumes are Songs of Innocence and Songs of
Experience. The names of his poems like, The
Evening Star, Memory, Night, Love, Spring,
Summer, The Tiger, The Lamb, etc. Some of his
mysticism by dipping into any of the works of
his middle life- Urizen, Gates of Paradise,
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America,
Jerusalem, etc.