Modern Literature and Literary Men: Being a Second Gallery of Literary Portraits (Classic Reprint)

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FB&C Limited, 2015 M07 13 - 344 páginas
Excerpt from Modern Literature and Literary Men: Being a Second Gallery of Literary Portraits

Are we not standing near the brink of another period, in some points very similar to that of English Puritanism? Is not our age getting tired of names, words, pretensions; and anxious for things, deeds, realities? It cares nothing now for such terms as Christendom - Reformed Churches - Glorious Constitution of 1688. It wants a Christendom where the character of Christ Iike that of Hamlet - is not omitted by special desire: it wants re-reformed churches, and a glorious constitution, that Will do a little more to feed, clothe, and educate those who sit under its shadow, and have long talked of, Without tasting, its blessed fruits. It wants, in short, those big, beautiful words - Liberty, Religion, Free Government, Church and State, taken down from our flags, transparencies, and triumphal arches, and introduced into our homes, hearths, and hearts. And, although we have now no Cromwell and no Milton, yet, thank God, we have thousands of gallant hearts, and gifted spirits, and eloquent tongues, who have vowed loud and deep, in all the languages of Europe, that falsehoods and deceptions, of all sorts and sizes, of all ages, statures, and complexions, shall come to a close.

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Acerca del autor (2015)

Edward Young (1681-1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts. Young is said to have been a brilliant talker. Although Night Thoughts is long and disconnected, it abounds in brilliant isolated passages. Its success was enormous. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Magyar. In France it became a classic of the romantic school. Questions as to the "sincerity" of the poet did arise in the 100 years after his death. The publication of fawning letters from Young seeking preferment led many readers to question the poet's sincerity. In a famous essay, Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, George Eliot discussed his "radical insincerity as a poetic artist." If Young did not invent "melancholy and moonlight" in literature, he did much to spread the fashionable taste for them. Madame Klopstock thought the king ought to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, and some German critics preferred him to John Milton. Young's essay, Conjectures on Original Composition, was popular and influential on the continent, especially among Germans, as a testament advocating originality over neoclassical imitation. Young wrote good blank verse, and Samuel Johnson pronounced Night Thoughts to be one of "the few poems" in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The poem was a poetic treatment of sublimity and had a profound influence on the young Edmund Burke, whose philosophic investigations and writings on the Sublime and the Beautiful were a pivotal turn in 18th-century aesthetic theory.

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