Review: Lustra of Ezra Pound, with Earlier Poems. Alumni Register (University of Pennsylvania), XX (1917-18), 602-04. 1920 Enrico W. Longfellow, Poeta-Dantista. . . . (Americani Illustri: Raccolta Biografica diretta de H. Nelson Gay, No. 9), Firenze, n.d. Reviews in The Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), Saturdays from Oct. 9, 1920 to June 11, 1921. Reprinted under title Appraisements and Asperities; see below. "The Seedpod of Shakespeare Criticism," University of Pennsylvania Lectures by Members of the Faculty, VII (1921), 141-57. "Some Values Educational and Other." Phi Beta Kappa Oration delivered at Franklin and Marshall College, June 7, 1921. Reformed Church Review, 4th Ser., XXV (1921), 196-220; Phi Beta Kappa Key, March 1922, pp. 611-26. "The Unity of the Arts." Commencement address delivered at Hood College, Frederick, Md., June, 1921. Printed in part in The Lesbian (Hood College), July, 1921. Address by Dr. Felix E. Schelling on the Occasion of the Unveiling of a Portrait of Joseph G. Rosengarten, University of Pennsylvania, Nov. 4, 1921, n.p., n.d. "The American University: Is It Fulfilling Its Ideals?" Opening lecture in a series of "Faculty Talks" in the Foyer of the Academy of Music, Nov. 15, 1921. The Pennsylvania Gazette, XX (1921), 126-27. 1922 Review: Sir George Greenwood: Shakespeare's Law. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, LXX (1922), 141-47. "The College Man as I Know Him,” Red and Blue, XXXVI (1921-22), 285. "Contemporary Poetry," Schoolmen's Week Proceedings (University of Pennsylvania), IX (1922), 281-84. Reviews in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Saturdays beginning May 13, Review: R. M. Alden: Shakespeare. Alumni Register (University of J. M. Robertson: The Shakespeare Canon. N. Y. Evening "Reasons for Teaching English Literature," The Pennsylvania Gazette, Appraisements and Asperities as to Some Contemporary Writers, 1923 "Sidney's Sister Pembroke's Mother," Johns Hopkins Graduates' Magazine, 1923. Foreign Influences in Elizabethan Plays, New York, 1923. I' THE ROMANTIC DEFENCE OF POETRY RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN Professor of English, Stanford University T is a matter of common knowledge that the critics of the Renaissance inherited from the medieval period the problem of the ethical justification of poetry, and attempted to solve it in certain characteristic ways. The most characteristic medieval solution was allegory: the tales of poets were made symbols of moral and spiritual truths. The characteristic Renaissance solution was what may be called Aristotelian idealism; namely, the doctrine that poetry is morally nobler and more efficacious than history, because it presents ideal or general truth instead of particular facts. This position was held tenaciously throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and indeed has never become obsolete. A somewhat different solution, appealing to a smaller number of critics, of more mystical temperament, might be called Platonic idealism,-the doctrine that earthly beauty is always an adumbration of heavenly beauty, and hence that poetry, in revealing it, is perpetually leading one to higher things. This was much closer to medieval feeling than the doctrine with which I have compared it. It provided, for such men as the Italian neo-platonists, an interesting means of refuting Plato's prejudices against poets out of his own mouth. But it is less important for later criticism than the Aristotelian argument, not only because it was less widely used-and more by poets than critics-but because it tends to base the defence of poetry on matters of religion rather than of morality. The standard neo-classic doctrine of the morality of poetry (I use "neo-classic" to cover the Renaissance period and the later periods which maintained the same critical doctrines) may be briefly exemplified by one or two familiar passages, in order to have it before our minds for comparison with later ideas. The purpose of poetry, said Scaliger, is to teach delightfully (docere cum delectatione) 1—a notion often connected, of course, with Horace's 'See Spingarn, Lit. Crit. in the Renaissance, p. 52. 1 miscuit utile dulci; to which Minturno, in his work De Poeta, added the function of moving to admiration (and, implicitly, to imitation) of the ideal persons whom the poet describes.1 In England Sir Philip Sidney and Francis Bacon represent the same position, in statements which have become classic. It is that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be the right describing note to know a poet by.... Whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it in some one, by whom he presupposeth it was done. For even those hard-hearted evil men. . . will be content to be delighted . . . and so steal to see the form of goodness (which seen they cannot but love) ere themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine of cherries. (Defense of Poesy.) Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more according to revealed providence: . . . so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. (Advancement of Learning.) Beyond this position criticism can scarcely be said to have advanced, up to the end of the eighteenth century. It should also be noted that these arguments of the neo-classic school are based almost wholly on narrative poetry, the form which remained dominant, except when its supremacy was threatened by the satiric, didactic, or expository types, throughout the same period. Exceptions may be found, for instance, Sidney's remarks on the stirring qualities of a war-song; but in general, as we know, the terms poetry and fiction were almost interchangeable in the period in question, and the imagination was thought of as the faculty which conceived persons and actions transcending experience. It is much more than a coincidence, then, that in the later period, when lyric poetry rapidly became the dominant type, a new defence of poetry was created accordingly. I am no lover of the term "romantic," the meaning of which no mortal has ever yet ascertained, and would gladly have avoided it in the title of this paper. But it is obvious that there are certain qualities and tendencies observable in the poetry of the age of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley (to speak of England alone), which are intimately related with each other and with the theory of poetry held by the same writers and many of their contemporaries. For these qualities and tendencies the word "romantic" is a convenient term, in general use. Now in the period and among the writers in question, we are all conscious that a new attitude appears respecting the relations of imaginative literature and morality. In part it is a matter of silence: the men of this age are not concerned, or do not condescend, to defend the utilities of poetry. When they speak of its two aspects or effects, pleasure and goodness, they are likely to seem much more interested in the former, and less in the latter, than their predecessors of the neo-classic era; and sometimes they explicitly state that to give pleasure is the characteristic, if not the sole, function of poetry, with moral utility a mere byproduct, an indirect or incidental gratuity. If pressed to answer the question whether poetry ministers to the moral nature in a definite way, they are pretty certain to take the affirmative side; but they explain what they mean in partially new and often tantalizingly vague terms. They do not point to the example of noble persons, stimulating the reader to imitation, like the critics of the Renaissance. They do not talk, like Sidney, of poetry pleasurably concealing instruction as cherries may conceal medicine. And as for that sort of poetry which is explicitly expository of moral ideas, they are averse to admitting that it is poetic at all. The nature of the claim which they make for the moral values of poetry—especially lyrical -appears to be connected closely with certain other doctrines respecting the character of the poetic process. I suppose that these things have been remarked by every one; but it is curious that no one seems to have undertaken to analyze them definitely. The fact is that under the romantic influences, now dominant for more than a century, critics interested in the history of imaginative art (with a few more or less erratic exceptions like Ruskin and Tolstoy) have had comparatively little interest in its relations with ethics; and formal ethical criticism rarely throws much light on literature. The chief names for our subject, in the period where it is naturally centered, are Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley, the three poets who represented the most conscious intellectual aspects of the romantic school, whose interests were ethical as well as imaginative, and who wrote not only poetry but important criticism. We should expect, I suppose, to find more material in Coleridge |