Jeff,
Apart from the back-to-front chronology of Poe and Baudelaire, 200 years
of British (and Irish) poetry swept aside with those two words "empiricist"
and "parochial"?
Would anyone but the philosophically-challenged Easthope (and yourself)
think "empirical" a useful term for a poet who writes about "A motion and a
spirit, that impels/ All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls
through all things..."? Even stopping with the nineteenth-century - do you
really find the Shelley of 'Prometheus Unbound', 'Epipsychidion' and 'The
Triumph of Life' empirical? And Byron parochial? Or Browning parochial (except
perhaps in 'Home Thoughts from Abroad' - but surely living some 15 years in
Italy he's allowed a moment of homesickness)? Clare parochial in any but the
most positive sense? Hopkins empirical?
No-one should force you to like any of these poets, but I think it's time you
gave your terminology an overhaul.
best wishes,
Jamie
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