Poetic diction: A study of eighteenth century verse

From the time of the publication of the first Preface to the “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) the poetical language of the eighteenth century, or rather of the so-called “classical” wri...

About the time when Dryden was beginning his literary career the preoccupation of men of letters with the language as a literary instrument was obvious enough. There was a decid...

Since the time when Wordsworth launched his manifestoes on the language fit and proper for poetry, it may almost be said that whenever the term “poetic diction” is found used as...

There is now to be noticed another type of eighteenth century poetic diction which was in its way as prevalent, and, it may be added, as vicious, as the stock diction which has...

One of the earliest and most significant of those literary manifestations which were to culminate in the triumph of Romanticism was a new enkindled interest in the older English...

It is proposed in this chapter to examine in some detail the use of compound epithets in the poetry of the eighteenth century. For this purpose the following grammatical scheme...

In the Preface of 1798, when Wordsworth formulated his theories with regard to poetical language, the first “mechanical device of style” against which he directed his preliminar...

After years of comparative neglect, and, it must be admitted, a good deal of uncritical disparagement, the “age of prose and reason” would seem at last to have come into its own...