Transitional poets

Transitional poets

This blog is part of assignment of Paper 102: 

Literature of the Neo-classical Period 

 

Unit 3: Thomas Gray & Robert Burns 

Table of content:

Abstract 

Keywords 

Characteristics of Transitional poetry 

Significance of Transitional Poets

The Transitional poets 

Gray , Burns and Blake: The Transitional Poets  

Conclusion  

Personal information : 

Name : Vala Nikita 

Batch : M.A Sem -1 (2024-2026) 

Enrollment Number : 5108240038

E-mail Address : nikitavala2811@gmail.com 

Roll no. 18 

Assignment Details :

Topic : Transitional poets

Paper and subject code : Paper 102: 

Literature of the Neo-classical Period 

Submitted to : Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardy, Department of English, MKBU , Bhavnagar 

Date of submission : November  20, 2024 

• Abstract: 

Transitional poets serve as a bridge between the Neoclassical and Romantic periods of English literature, spanning the mid-18th to early 19th centuries. These poets incorporate the structured, formal qualities of Neoclassicism while introducing emerging Romantic themes such as emotion, nature, and individualism. Key figures like Thomas Gray, William Cowper, James Thomson, William Blake, Robert Burns, and Oliver Goldsmith played pivotal roles in this shift. Their works often explore the beauty of nature, critique urbanization, and emphasize the emotional and imaginative aspects of human experience. By blending classical and Romantic elements, transitional poets laid the groundwork for the full development of Romanticism, influencing later poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This period marks a significant evolution in literary history, moving from reason and order to a celebration of emotion, imagination, and the natural world.

• Keywords:

Transitional Poets, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Emotion, Nature, Individualism, Thomas Gray ,William Cowper, James Thomson ,William Blake, Robert Burns ,Oliver Goldsmith ,Allegory ,Urbanization, Imagination, Sublime, Pastoral Simplicity, Critique of Industrialization, English Literature,18th to 19th Century.

• Introduction to Transitional Poets

Transitional poets are those who played a crucial role in the shift from the Neoclassical to the Romantic period in English literature during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These poets, such as Thomas Gray, William Cowper, James Thomson, William Blake, Robert Burns, and Oliver Goldsmith, blended the structured formality and rationalism of Neoclassicism with emerging Romantic themes like emotion, nature, and individualism. Their works often reflect a growing appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, the complexity of human emotion, and a critique of industrialization and social conventions. Transitional poets laid the foundation for the Romantic movement, marking a significant literary transformation that embraced creativity, emotion, and a deeper connection to nature.

• Characteristics of Transitional poetry:

Blend of Classical and Romantic Elements: Transitional poets often maintained a Neoclassical sense of formality, precision, and structure while exploring Romantic themes like emotion, nature, the sublime, and individualism.

Critique of Urbanization and Industrialization: These poets often critiqued the effects of industrialization and urbanization, showing a preference for rural simplicity, which later became a major theme in Romanticism.

Interest in Nature and the Sublime: While Neoclassicism focused on reason and order, transitional poets began emphasizing the beauty, power, and emotional impact of the natural world.

Focus on Emotion and Imagination: Transitional poets paved the way for Romanticism by giving greater importance to personal emotion, imagination, and subjective experience.

• Significance of Transitional Poets

Transitional poets played a crucial role in moving English poetry away from the restrained, formal, and rational characteristics of Neoclassicism to the more expressive, imaginative, and nature-oriented themes of Romanticism. They set the stage for major Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats, who would dominate the early 19th century and fully embrace the ideals these transitional figures began exploring.

• THE TRANSITIONAL POETS:

It was in the late eighteenth century that the poets began tiring with the neo - classical ideals of wit, reason and decorum . The people had become fed up with the rational, intellectual, formal and unromantic poetry of the age of Pope . The people began feeling suffocated with the artificiality of city life and craved for freshness of Nature and naturality. They wished to return to the free and living world of leaves , flowers, clouds, rivers and mountains .The age witnessed the struggle between the old and the new , and the gradual triumph of the latter over the former . Though the poets of this age could not break totally free from the spirit of the previous age of Pope , they certainly foresaw the new worldand worked as a link between the previous age and the Romantic age , hence they are also called the ‘Precursors of Romantic Revival Movement’ . The eminent poets of the period are:-

1.James Thomson(1700-48) : First of all Thomson came up with new note with his “ Seasons”(1726) and “ The Castle of Indolence” (1748) . “Seasons” is full of descriptions of refreshing joy of nature written in blank verse while “The Castle of Indolence” is imitative written in Spenserian Stanza creating an atmosphere of dreamy melancholy in the manner of Spenser. Rickett says , “ As a writer he signalizes the departure from the town to the country ,chose the Spenserian stanza and blank verse as his medium ,and eschewed the stopped couplet that was ubiquitous in the realm of poetry at the time.” His “Liberty” (1735-36) proved unsuccessful.

2.Thomas Gray(1716-71) : Though he wrote only 13 poems in his life time, he became famous for his poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”(1751).All his poems are remarkable for their quality and finish and they made the readers foresee the arrival of the new atmosphere .

3. William Collins (1721-59): We find romantic feelings in his very first poem “Oriental Eclogues”(1742) though it written in prevailing couplets. .His “Odes” are remarkable for their lyric note while “Ode to Evening” is full of sweet tenderness and pathos .His “Ode to the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands” introduced a new world of fairies, pygmies, witches and other supernatural elements paving path for the poets for romantic revival. His “Odes to Simplicity ,To Fear, To The Passions ,To Evening” are also significant.

4. William Cowper (1731-1800): From the viewpoint of his feeling for Nature and his lyricism he is regarded as an immediate forerunner of the Romantics . “The Task”(1785) is remarkable for his descriptions of homely scenes ,woods and brooks, fountains ,ploughmen and teamasters etc. indicating the dawn of the new era. Cowper is first to preach us the gospel of ‘back to nature’ when he wrote- ‘God made the country and man made the town’ and thus he is said to foreshadow Wordsworth and Byron .

5. George Crabbe(1754-1832): Crabbe’s important poetical works “The Library”(1781) “The Village” and (1783) “The Borough”(1810) etc. exhibit the qualities of romanticism as they deal with the lives of simple countryfolk and human nature and behavior though they are written in heroic couplet . Crabbe’s humanism is remarkable for sincerity, sympathy ,attention and acute observation on which Rickett remarks ‘…….…no poet has a wider sympathy with his kind than he ,or more snuff of humanity in his writings’.

• Gray, Burns, and Blake: The Transitional Poets

It was the mid-eighteenth century and poets were tiring of the neoclassical ideals of reason and wit. The Neoclassic poets, such as Alexander Pope, "prized order, clarity, economic wording, logic, refinement, and decorum. Theirs was an age of rationalism, wit, and satire." This contrasts greatly with the ideal of Romanticism, which was "an artistic revolt against the conventions of the fashionable formal, civilised, and refined Neoclassicism of the eighteenth century." Poets like William, "dropped conventional poetic diction and forms in favour of freer forms and bolder language. They preached a return to nature, elevated sincere feeling over dry intellect, and often shared in the revolutionary fervour of the late eighteenth century." Poets wanted to express emotion again. They wanted to leave the city far behind and travel back to the simple countryside where rustic, humble men and women resided and became their subjects. These poets, William Blake, Thomas Gray, and Robert Burns, caught in the middle of neoclassic writing and the Romantic Age, are fittingly known as the Transitional poets.

Thomas Gray transitioned these phases nicely; he kept "what he believed was good in the old, neoclassic tradition" but adventured forth into "unfamiliar areas in poetry." In particular, Gray brought back to life the use of the first-person singular, for example "One morn I missed him on the customed hill…" which had been "considered a barbarism by eighteenth century norm." Thomas Gray’s poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a wonderful example of natural settings in transitional poetry. It "reflects on the lives of common, unknown, rustic men and women, in terms of both what their lives were and what they might have been". Gray is unafraid to see the poor, and emotionally illustrates how death affects their life: "For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, / Or busy housewife ply her evening care: / No children run to lisp their sire’s return…."

However, humble settings were also readily used by Robert Burns, a Scottish poet "frequently counted wholly as a romantic poet" , but who’s work often makes him a more transitional as it incorporates both neoclassical and romantic verse ideals. To a Mouse, also takes place in the country, and this time the humble subject is not a man, but a lowly mouse. Using such terms as "beastie" and "Mousie" results in an affectionate tone, as the human species is emotionally weighed up against "Mousie’s" life. A common ground is found when the poet notes that "the best laid scheme o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft agley, / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain". This public display of emotion, such as the affection and concern for the mouse, as well as a depressing revelation that life can go wrong for all, would have been surprising to pre-romanticism readers. One of Burns most significant influences though, was his use of Scottish dialect to write his poems; it was "a great departure from the elegant and artificial diction of eighteenth-century poetry." His use of dialect gave the reader a sense of connection to the common man and the humble subjects of this poetry. It created a rawer, more real mood that would have been lost in the ornamental heroic couplets used by the Neoclassic writers.

William Blake is, however, arguably the most important transitional poet. As a poet he did away with the common standards of "rationality and restraint" , instead favouring to write using "bold, unusual symbols to elaborate the divine energies at work in the universe" in poems such as The Tyger. This poem makes use of an awe-inspiring mood, coupled with deeply universal concerns and experiences. In this case, the tiger is a symbol of the evil in mankind, and the heavy knowledge of experience that is brought with adulthood. His poems also made great use of repetition and parallelism, sometimes to gain the effect of a nursery rhyme, simple soft and sweet, as read in The Lamb: "Little Lamb God bless thee, / Little Lamb God bless thee." However, the same device also emphasises the rhetorical nature of his famous question "Tyger…what immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" which makes up both the first and last stanza of The Tyger.

The transitional poets were no longer afraid to feel and were brave men who put their hearts on paper for all to see. They expressed a simple affection for uncomplicated country life, and used such settings to make profound comments on mankind in general, death, and religion. These poets idealised the humble man, the country setting, and universal truths. It is fitting to call Gray, Burns and Blake adventurers, whose guides to new lands were their pens. They dared change through the use of unconventional devices, such as dialect, the invocation of emotions, and the egotistic use of the first person singular. These changes in verse, and the subsequent popularity, and admiration received from the public, for Gray and Burns (Blake was not appreciated until the next century) and their transitional poetry marked the beginning of the end of Neoclassicism. Now, these three poets having forged the way, it was time for the Romantics to follow.

• Conclusion: 

Transitional poets were instrumental in the evolution of English literature, guiding the shift from the rational and formal Neoclassical period to the imaginative and nature-focused Romantic era. By blending traditional poetic forms with emerging themes of emotion, individualism, and the sublime, they created a unique space that both honored classical influences and anticipated future literary trends. These poets' critiques of urbanization and industrialization, alongside their celebration of nature and the rural life, laid the foundation for the Romantic movement’s emphasis on personal experience and the natural world. The transitional period showcases a dynamic literary transformation that set the stage for the profound impact of Romanticism, forever altering the course of English poetry.

 

Words  : 2012

Images : 1

References: 

“Robert Browning.” Encyclopædia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Browning. 

“Transitional Poets.” Angelfire, https://www.angelfire.com/nm/nighttime/poetry/transitional.html.