The French Revolution of 1789 marked a watershed for the future of Europe, a fact keenly discerned by writers on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Irving Babbitt and Matthew Arnold. Not only did that Revolution initiate the political… Read More ›
In England, the ground for Romanticism was prepared in the latter half of the eighteenth century through the economic, political, and cultural transformations mentioned in the preceding chapters. The system of absolute government crumbled even earlier in Britain than elsewhere;… Read More ›
It was Wordsworth who wrote the following famous lines about the French Revolution as it first appeared to many of its sympathizers: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven! O times,… Read More ›
Cleanth Brooks, an eminent New Critic, advocates the centrality of paradox as a way of understanding and interpreting poetry, in his best-known works, The Language of Paradox, The Well Wrought Urn (1947) and “Modern Poetry and the Tradition” (1939). Brooks… Read More ›