by M H Abrams
language games, 98, 125–26, 129
language-in-general, 57, 58, 61, 74–75
language-in-use, 57, 61, 69, 86
language of concern, 97
langue, 58, 64
l’art pour l’art, 157, 180, 182, 183, 193n
law of sufficient reason, 97
Lawrence, D. H., xi, 147–48
laws of motion, 126
lecture, 59
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 158
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 202–3
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 55
liberation rhetoric, 66
light, 73
literary criticism, language considered by and in itself in, 57
literary theory:
classical, x
Romantic, x
literature, humanistic view of intermediary by, 57
Locke, John, 157, 158
logical, logic, 65, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103
deductive, 97
logocentric language, 74, 86
Lolita (Nabokov), 1–2
Longinus, x, 69, 155
Lorraine, Claude, 44
love, 14–18, 171–72, 177, 178
Augustine’s doctrine of, 169–71, 174
as desire for beauty, 166–67
“Lucy” poems (Wordsworth), 108, 114–15
Luke, Gospel of, 196–97
Lutheranism, 177
Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge), 114, 214, 223–24
magical realism, 72
maker, as poet, 155
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 72, 183
“Manfred” (Byron), 202
“Mansions” (Ammons), 22–29, 149
mark, 75
Marxist criticism, 103
Marxists, discourse seen as constituted by ideology by, 76–77
material signifier, 32
material sublime, 39
meaning, 61, 65
free generation of, 66
in “Ode to Autumn,” 46–47
of “On This Island,” 6
mechanism, 134–35, 136
Mendelssohn, Moses, 174, 191n
metafiction, 91n
metaphors, 91n
metaphysics, 163, 179, 183, 199
as journey, 208–10
meter, in “Ode to Autumn,” 46–47
Michelangelo, 187
Middle Ages, 156, 200
Mill, John Stuart, 54
Miller, J. Hillis, 64, 81, 84–85, 88n
fixed meanings denied by, 107
Milton, John, 34, 221, 224
mimesis, 152
mind, in Wordsworth’s metaphor, 138–39
Mirror and the Lamp, The: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Abrams), x–xi
misprision, 106
misreading, 85, 106
by author, 91n
Mitchell, Margaret, 20
mixed motives, 218
Modern Language Association, 85
Molière, 80
Morgenstunden (Mendelssohn), 191n
Moritz, Karl Philipp, 174–77, 178, 179, 192n
Moses, 196
motion, laws of, 126
motive, 66
Murdoch, Iris, 186–87, 195n
music, 151, 156, 162
“My First Acquaintance with Poets” (Hazlitt), 214, 226
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 221–22
narrative, reference of, 59, 79
Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (Abrams), xi
nature, 70
humanization of, 136–40
religion of, 131
in Romantic poets, 130–50
self vs., 135–40
Neate, Bill, 226
neo-Marxism, 85
Neoplatonic idealism, 38
neopragmatism, 74
Nether Stowey, U.K., 214
New Critics, 30, 103, 152, 154, 187
on self-sufficiency of poems, 186
New Historicism, 54, 63, 85
New Testament, 168, 195
Newton, Isaac, 126, 133–34, 143
Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 190n
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 101, 159
contemplation model denigrated by, 188
power principle and, 220
nihilism, 101
Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 187
non-ego, 135
nonhumanistic, 93
nonreference, 152
“Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae,” see “Cynara” (Dowson)
Novalis, 141, 204
“Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” (Tennyson), 14–18
stanzas of, 15
object, 135
objectivity, 58
“Ode on Melancholy” (Keats), 36, 37–38, 41
odes, 42
“Ode to a Grecian Urn” (Keats), 41
“Ode to a Nightingale” (Keats), 33, 35, 36–37, 41
“Ode to Autumn” (Keats), 37, 41–50, 51n
enunciation in, 44
punctuation of, 51n–54n
setting of, 45–46
triple suspension in, 46–47
“Ode to Evening” (Collins), 42–44, 45–46, 48–49
oral feel of, 43
Ode to Psyche (Keats), 38, 41
“Ode to the West Wind” (Shelley), 23, 24
Odyssey (Homer), 198, 206
“Of Tragedy” (Hume), 90n
Olafson, Frederick, 93–94, 97, 98, 100, 101
Old Testament, 168, 195–96
“On a Sun-Dial” (Hazlitt), xii–xiii
On Christian Doctrine (Augustine), 169
“On Depth and Superficiality” (Hazlitt), 220–21
one life, 131
One Primal Man, 147–48
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (Keats), 50
“On Friendship” (Cicero), 190n
“On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry” (Schiller), 206, 218
“On Poesy or Art” (Coleridge), 135
“On Poetry in General” (Hazlitt), 218–19, 220
“On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” (Keats), 79
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Schiller), 206
“On the Formative Imitation of the Beautiful” (Moritz), 176–77
“On the Pleasure of Hating” (Hazlitt), 224
On the Principles of Human Action (Hazlitt), 217
On the Trinity (Augustine), 169
“On This Island” (Auden), 4–10
act of utterance of, 6, 8–10
meaning of, 6
speech sounds in, 4–6
stresses in, 8
visual appearance of, 4, 7
oral echoism, 6
Order of Things, The (Foucault), 55
Origen, 168
overpopulation, 131
paintings, 151, 156, 161, 162, 189n
Palmer, Samuel, 51n
pantheism, 108
Paris, student uprisings in, 66
Park, Clara Claiborne, 79
parole, 58, 109
participation, 105
passion, 217
pastoral elegies, 146–47
Pater, Walter, xi
Paul, Saint, 129, 169, 170, 196
perception, Locke’s philosophy of, 157
peregrination vitae, 195–212
performative, 65
personal identity
, 70
personification, of text, 62–65
Petrarchan sonnet, 12
Phaedo (Plato), 194n
Phaedrus (Plato), 194n
phallocentricism, 77
Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel), 141, 208–10
Philebus (Plato), 167
Philosophical Lectures (Coleridge), 144
philosophy, dualism in, 134
phonocentrism, 32
Pietà, 187
Pietism, 177, 178
Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 201
Pisgah, Mount, 196
Plato, 158, 182, 188
art derogated by, 186
ideal essence represented by, 166–67
Platonic dialogues, 70
Platonic model of self-sufficient beauty, 179–80
Platonic philosophy of art, 38, 39–40, 182, 184
Platonists, 164
pleasure, calculus of, 220
“Pleasures of the Imagination, The” (Addison), 157–58
Plotinus, 167–68, 179, 199
pluralism, 99
Poe, Edgar Allen, 180, 183
poema, 67, 155
poems, poetry:
as expression of imagination, 132
as fine art, 151, 161, 162, 189n
material medium of, 31
meaning of, 2, 3, 4, 106–29
as most intimate of arts, 2
physical aspect of, 1–3, 4
poems, poetry (continued)
reading aloud, 3–4, 9
sound of, 2, 4
visible aspect of, 2, 4
“Poems of the Imagination” (Wordsworth), 115
poésie pure, La, 183
poet, as maker, 155
poeta, 67, 155
Poetics (Aristotle), 69, 96, 99, 155–56
Political Essays (Hazlitt), 225
political evils, 55
pollution, 131
Pope, Alexander, 35, 216
Porter, Cole, 20
positivism, 67
postmodernism, 91n
post-Newtonian world, 133, 143
postructuralism, 53, 69
author seen as agency by, 58
feminism and, 77
language-in-general and, 57
theory privileged over reality in, 76–77, 79, 81–87
translocation of initiative in, 62
ultrastructuralism vs., 74
postscientific inhumanism, 78
poststructuralism, as seen by humanists, 72–74, 77
poststructural theorists, 30
humanism seen as root cause of social and political evil by, 55–56
readers’ freedom celebrated by, 59
Pound, Ezra, 3, 222
power, 63, 76, 81
in Hazlitt’s criticism, 217, 219–25
power principle, 220
pragmatism, 70
prayer, 178, 187
Prelude, The (Wordsworth), 116–17, 137, 138–40, 145, 208, 210
presence, 61
primitives, 70–71, 78
Proclus, 199
prodesse et delectare, 156
prodigal son, 196–97
Prometheus, 204
Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 204
Promised Land, 196
property rights, 67
proportion, 165
prosopopeia, 62–63
Proust, Marcel, 91n
Pseudo-Dionysus, 168, 169
psychology, dualism in, 134
pure form, 184
purposefulness without a purpose, 160
purposes, 94, 98
purposiveness, 62, 78, 134
Quietist sect, 175, 179
racial repression, 56
Raleigh, Walter, 124
rationality, 97, 100
readers, 59–60
realism, 72
reality, appearance vs., 70
recalcitrancies, 121–23
Recluse, The (Wordsworth), 208
redemption, 203
reference, in art, 153
reference effect, 60
“Reflective” (Ammons), 149–50
Reformers, 225
reintegration, 144
in “Adonais,” 146–47
in Apocalypse, 148
in “The force that through the green fuse,” 148–49
in Hyperion, 145–46
in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” 141–43
relativism, as threat to humanities, 94, 95, 96–97, 98–99
religion:
of art, 183, 185
utilitarian, 164
religion of nature, 131
religious formulations, as replaced by high Romantic speculations and visions, xi
Renaissance, 155, 156, 182
Republic (Plato), 167
responsibility, 98
Revelation, Book of, 197, 199
Reynolds, John Hamilton, 39, 45
rhetoric, classical writers on, 69, 155–56
rhetorical, 65
rhetoricians, 155
Ricks, Christopher, 35
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The” (Coleridge), 141–43, 202
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 193n
Romanes lecture, 186–87
Romans, Epistle to, 197
Romantic literary theory, x
Romantic poets:
journey of life seen by, 203–10
metaphors of, 136–40
nature seen by, 130–50
religion of nature of, 131
Rorty, Richard, 74
Rossiter, A. P., 127
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 64, 80–81
“Ruined Cottage, The” (Wordsworth), 135, 136–37
Sage Chapel, 3
salvation history, 202
Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), 204–5
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 135–36, 162, 206
Schiller, Friedrich, 162, 206–7, 218
Schlegel, Friedrich, 162
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 162, 179
science, 38–39, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103
and alienation from nature, 150
sciences, human, and deletion of human, 55
scientism, 98
scriptor, 58, 65, 88n
sculpture, 151, 156, 161, 189n
Searle, John, 60, 75
Seasons (Thomson), 52n
self, 70
nature vs., 135–40
self-consciousness, 148
self-interest, self-love, 164, 171
self-sufficiency, 152, 154, 167, 174, 176
beauty and, 192n
of God, 170, 181
Mallarmé’s view of poetry as, 183
New Critics’ commitment to, 186
Platonic model of beauty as, 179–80
semantic communication, 59
semiology, 64
semiotics, 31
sense experience, 51n
Sermons (Whichcote), 171
Seven Types of Ambiguity (Empson), 127
sexual repression, 56
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 157, 158, 164–66, 171–73, 178
Shakespeare, William, 24, 34, 79, 221
ambiguity in, 127–28
as disinterested, 218
interpretations of, 102–3
“She Dwelt among th’ Untrodden Ways” (Wordsworth), 114
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
, x, 23, 24, 132, 150, 200
“Adonais,” 146–47
sound of, 31
significant form, 184
significations, 61, 66
infinite number of, 107
Sinai, Mount, 196
skepticism, 72
double life and, 70, 85–86, 90n
self and, 70
as threat to humanities, 94, 95–97, 98–99, 100–101, 125
“Slumber, A” (Wordsworth), 107–26
author’s seminar students’ reading of, 111, 125
claim of ambivalence in, 127, 128
as compared to other Wordsworth poems, 114–18
Davies’ reading of trancelike state in, 108–24, 129
intention in, 112–16
shift in tense of, 124
standard reading of, 108–24
social repression, 55–56
Socrates, 70, 101
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 101
Song of Songs, 199
sound, 31–32
South Africa, 83
Southey, Robert, 219
Spanish Tragedy, The (Kyd), 104
Spanos, William, 56
spectator, 157–58, 159, 164
speech, 32, 61
Spenser, Edmund, 34, 201
Sperry, Stuart, 38
spirit, 38, 135, 209–10
in “A Slumber,” 108–24
Spirit of the Age, The (Hazlitt), 223–24
spirits, 39
spiritual, 38
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, 12–13
“Spot of Time,” 137
stability, 83–84
status, 66
Stevens, Wallace, xi
Stevenson, R. L., xii, 227
“Still” (Ammons), 149
Stillinger, Jack, 52n
Stolnitz, Jerome, 153–54
“Strange Fits of Passion,” 119–20
Strauss, Johann, 20
stressed syllables, in Auden, 4
structuralism, 42, 53, 69, 103, 187
author seen as space by, 58
decentering of, 55
Foucault’s denunciation of structural model of semiology of, 64
humans seen as empty by, 55, 57
language-in-general and, 57
merits of, 73
readers’ role analyzed in, 59
as seen by humanists, 72–74
text as self-sustaining system in, 152
structure, 102
“Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric” (Abrams), xi
student uprisings (Paris 1968), 66
subject, 58, 135
subjectivity, 58
de Man’s reduction of, 80–81
and judgment of art, 158–59
sublime, sublimation, 39
sublime style, 69
Sulzer, J. G., 189n
summum bonum, 164, 170, 177
supernationalism, 78
“Surprised by Joy” (Wordsworth), 12–14