Thursday, March 29, 2012
Lockhart and Peacock
Like Miranda, I found Lockhart's criticism of the Cockney School to be highly entertaining and also an effective window into contemporary feelings on Keats' poetry. Lockhart doesn't hesitate to commend Keats for his excellent talents, but claims that they are ruined since he "caught the infection" of verse. This analogy of poetry to a virus or disease that can turn a good citizen into a ruined one brings to mind the ideas we discussed on Tuesday, especially Peacock's claim that poetry is no longer beneficial to society at large. Just as Lockhart posits that "time, firm treatment, and rational restraint" can cure Keats of his malady, Peacock says that poetry can never make "a useful or rational man." Like the Battle of the Books determined, occupations such as these should be left to the ancients while moderns should "adhere to the safe old rule of pauca verba." Rationality, then, in their eyes was more empirical then than we define it today, and creative arts such as poetry were seen as nothing more than futile.
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Given Lockhart's "call to reason," I was surprised that he didn't directly address and condemn the emotional tenor of Keat's poetry. Though Keat's work didn't seem quite as isn't quite as sentimental and emotive as other Romantic poets like Wordsworth, who deeply emphasized the importance of an emotional connection with surrounding nature, his work is certainly infused with strong feeling. Perhaps Lockhart was trying to avoid repeating the same qualms as his contemporaries since the Romantics were so commonly criticized for being overly emotional. Even if this is the case I don’t think he really succeeded – his metaphor of poetry as a disease is reminiscent of the common trope that compares passion to a fever or insanity that ravages the body.
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