Arnold & Keats

Poets' conceptions of their roles in society can be fairly consistent for long periods of time or may change rapidly in a decade or two. The difference between the idea of a poet's function as conceived by the Romantic era and the Victorian period provides an example of significant change. Not all the supposed members of any school of poetry, of course, share every aspect of the predominant theory of poetry in their generation. Neither John Keats (1795-1821) nor Matthew Arnold (1822-88) is entirely typical of his era. But, especially because Arnold reacted against Keats--among others--in specific, articulated ways, a comparison of their ideas of their role as poets will demonstrate how such changes take place and the effect they have on the poetry that is written.

A brief discussion of the two poets' ideas about the art of poetry must precede the analysis of their notions of the poet's role. Keats and Arnold form a particularly interesting contrast because even the forms in which they articulated their ideas about poetry and poets are very different from each other and entirely consonant with their ideas. Keats' thoughts on poetry were not systematically set out. But in the course of his brief life he was in the habit of discussing poetry in his many letters. As Stone explains, Keats' "statements dashed off in the communicative urgency of letter-writing" directly reflect the way his thinking about poetry was formulated (13). Although the creation of his art was a

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aining "aloof from practice" and, as he said, allowing the free play of the critic's mind to "know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by its turn, making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas" (quoted in Reist 21). His project was, as Armstrong puts it, "to recentre English poetry in a moral tradition" and the actual creation of poetry, for which he favored a plain and severe style, became subordinate to the message to a large degree (208). In his critical appraisals and discussion of poetic practice it became the case that "the requirements of poetry and prose" were extremely close simply because "prose is the proper medium of the critical power" and Arnold conceived of poetry as a means of discussing the moral needs and failures of contemporary society (Roper 33). He favored a "very plain direct and severe" style, as he put it, because any other approach tended to distract from the subject matter and the meaning of the poem as a whole (Roper 31). One of the principle grounds on which he favored such a style was the fact that, at its best, it could not be imitated by other poets. In a comparison of Homer and Milton, for example, Arnold admired Milton's grand severe style but gave the firs

Category: Arts - A