>I recognised it as Wordsworth as soon as I read it, Bob, as you say, the
>ice
> skates told me. I did rack my wits a little to see if I could find another
> candidate, as I thought your reference to the first major ascent a little
> questionable. I can see why you made it, but I don't think of a precise
> point for 'modern' English beginning (you could make a very strong
> argument
> for Dryden's 'MackFlecknoe' as representing such a point for example,
> certainly Dryden and Pope were 'modernists' in relation to the main thrust
> of their immediate literary past) while of course the writers of the early
> 20th century saw Donne in particular as if contemporary (underneath the
> thees and thous) And so on. You can certainly see a foreshadowing of
> Wordsworth in both Henry Vaughan and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
> too.
> Anyhow I don't see 'literary' time (nor its unscripted original) as being
> simply linear anyhow, eddies and bobs, as it were, Bob ;)
>
> best
>
> dave
I am close to agreeing with you, Dave, but I think Wordsworth started
English poetry's first chain reaction. I see the change occurring as
between concern with formal received (classical) themes and concern with
less formal ad hoc personal themes. It's all my impression--I don't know
enough to be sure of it. I wonder, though, did anyone before Wordsworth
write a lyric poem or passage in a long poem about something like the joy of
boyhood skating? It also strikes me--right now--that Wordsworth in his best
poems never plays word games like Donne and Shakespeare. Did he get that
from the poet who was, I think, his immediate predecessor, Crabbe. I don't
know his work well, at all.
Basically, for temperamental reasons no doubt, I like seeing things in black
and white terms--big antitheses--although I don't deny the validity of
seeing them as all tremory grey.
all best, Bob
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