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I think we are in agreement ... I am thinking also of the route of the procession and its specific relation to the values of the City (in the East) as against what should be the values of the court and aristocracy (in the West): the importation of the values of the City into Westminster ... What could go wrong with that?
Yours,
Robert
From my memories of The Dunciad, i thought Pope was attacking the market and commercial pressures ... though the discourse used here and before is mine rather than his.
Robert
On 26 January 2018 at 16:20, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Robert,There may well be an element of heightened competitiveness once books are up for sale, but I think competition goes with the territory – it’s there in Catullus (whose poems I happen to have been looking at) in a barbed and brilliant style. Your point about classical pastoral holds too. And there among the Elizabethans. And, yes, we see it in quite extreme form during the Romantic period.Could just be ignorance on my part, but I’m resistant to the general application of Marxian concepts of commodification to the arts. I accept that changes occur when poetry, in this case, enters the market though these changes may be superficial. And I also consider poetry quite capable of simultaneously playing with and resisting (favoured word in ‘avant’ discourse) and transcending (suspect word) those pressures, as I’d think Pope does as well. But then I suspect Marx and Adorno, from whom much of the talk about commodification derives, were both well aware of this.JamieFrom: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank"> Hampson, RSent: Friday, January 26, 2018 3:38 PMSubject: Re: Amazing DiscoveryIt is interesting that you take this potential for conflict back to The Dunciad. It is tempting to try and link it, then, to the commodification of literature - the turn from a patronage model to a commercial model. I tried to imagine responses to the introduction of the sonnet into English poetry at the Tudor court - and was thinking of the earlier social separation of court poets and the various anons of folk culture. Presumably the rivalries between court poets weren't about aesthetics.
I wondered also about the hostile response to early Shakespeare from the Cambridge school of his day ...and how the competitions between poets in classical pastoral might be figured into this.
Robert
From: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]AC.UK> on behalf of Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 26 January 2018 15:25:08
To: [log in to unmask]AC.UK
Subject: Re: Amazing DiscoveryBeats me! But if were pressed for a better reply I’d say poetry has always been a bitterly contested zone from way before The Dunciad. But as I’m not in favour of spurious divisions, on the thread about the Rebecca Watts article – I think David and Michael both put eloquent arguments for and against it. Without getting into whether she might have done it with a less personalised attack on Hollie McNish, in the end I’m more of the view that if it’s being billed as poetry, it should be looked at as such. And so it doesn’t get a free pass (as in ‘category error’) and an exemption from ‘literary criticism’.JamieFrom: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank"> Hampson, RSent: Friday, January 26, 2018 12:45 PMSubject: Re: Amazing DiscoveryHow on earth could that have happened?
Robert