Poetry of the Romantic Movement.— The latter portion of the 18th century and the early portion of the 19th were characterized, through out western Europe, by various tendencies com monly summed up in the vague term, the re vival of romanticism?' The following are some of the marks of this era affecting the develop ment of poetry: (1) A new emphasis on the lyrical, subjective and spiritual elements of poetry, with a disposition to view its imagina tive processes as existing not merely for the sake of pleasure, but for the pursuit of truth by means of the higher intuitions of the mind. Important representatives of this aspect are Jean Paul Richter and his followers in Ger many and Wordsworth and Coleridge in Eng land. Wordsworth in his (Prefaces) (1800-15) and Coleridge in his (Biographia Literaria' (1816) discussed poetry as the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge)) and the imagina tion as a means of apprehending and revealing truth. (2) A disposition to revive and value the natural or popular poetry of the medieval period, as exemplified by Percy's (Reliques of Ancient Poetry) (1765) and the lectures and researches of Herder in Germany. (3) A cor responding disposition to discard and contemn the formal rules of poetic art which had been taught since the Renaissance and to exalt in their stead individual freedom and novelty of form. Representative documents in this con nection are Victor Hugo's preface to (Crom well) (1827) and.a famous passage in Macau lay's essay on (Byron) (1831), ridiculing the classicist's idea of in poetry.
Poetry of the 19th Century.— The romantic attitude continued, for the most part, to domi nate the modern period, with emphasis on in dividuality, freedom, variety and intensity, as the qualities most highly valued in poetry; though this was tempered by the return, on the part of individual poets (like Goethe in Germany and Matthew Arnold in England), for guidance and inspiration to the poetry of the ancients. Extraordinary metrical variety, in contrast with the regularity and conserva tism of the neo-classical schools, is characteris tic of the whole of the past century. Another characteristic is the preponderance of the lyrical type, so marked that a distinguished critic has said that °the history of modern verse is mainly the history of lyrical sentiment.° That is to say, in drama has been increasingly writ ten n prose, modern epic has been developed but slightly, and narrative art has found its chief expression in the form of prose fiction. Perhaps the most characteristic poetic type of the 19th century is the dramatic monologue, which combines some of the elements of narra tive with the subjective expressiveness of the lyric.
Recent Poetry.— The opening years of the 20th century have been marked by a revival of interest inpoetry as a vital literary form and by a rich development of the spirit of experi mentation. In particular, certain new move ments or schools have arisen, analogous to similar phenomena in the arts of painting, sculpture and music; perhaps the most note worthy calls itself by the name Imagism, a term brought into English from France. The
qualities of this new poetry may be roughly de scribed as consisting in (1) the attempt to represent freshly the fleeting impressions ex perienced by individual personality; (2) the rejection of all effort to interpret experiences generally or didactically; and (3) a preference for approximation and suggestiveness as dis tinguished from the attainment of finished form. The °new poetry° is especially marked by abundant metrical experimentation, often reaching the point of the abandonment of recognizable metre for rhythmic forms more eccentric or obscure than have yet been suc cessfully analyzed. As in this respect there is a tendency to abolish the line between the art of verse and that of prose composition, so, in the style or diction of recent poetry there is a disposition to avoid all distinction between the vocabulary and tone of the two kinds of dis course. This •rosaic-poetic style was delib erately introduced into English poetry by Wordsworth at the end of the 18th century, was developed in different ways by such dif ferently influential poets as Browning and Whit man and, in general, may be said to have gone far to do away with the older doctrine of a distinct vocabulary and style for poetry. On the other hand, it still remains doubtful whether the definite line between metrical and non metrical composition can be blurred or neg lected with lastingly pleasing results.
Bibliography.— For the general theory of poetry and the history of its forms, see Butcher's (Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine.
including a translation of the (Poetics) of Aristotle (London 1898) ; Gayley
(Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism) (Boston 1899) ; Alden's (Introduc tion to Poetry) (New York 1909) ; Gummere's (Handbook of Poetics) (Boston 1885) ; Gum mere's (The Beginnings of Poetry) (New York 1901) ; Cook's