Book Description

Excerpt from The Greater Victorian Poets IT is impossible to define precisely, and often difficult to define at all, a period of literature. The political divisions commonly adopted are approximations, in many cases of the roughest kind. When we begin to ask what are the limits of the Elizabethan period, or of the period of Queen Anne, we find that the divisions which criticism can establish in literature by no means syn chronise with the time covered by the reigns of those sovereigns. Nevertheless, it requires but little reflection to Show that ex pressions of this kind, though never exact, generally convey a substantial truth. The movement of time is an abstract ex pression which means the movement of the human spirit in all its manifestations; and the movement of time is best marked by political events. Thus, when, with reference to literature, we speak of the age of Pericles or of Elizabeth, or of the period of the French Revolution, we mean that there was in those ages a movement in literature bearing conspicuously the impress of its connexion with the history of the time. No one can doubt that the marvellous literary activity of Athens in the fifth century was intimately connected with the events which made the city politically so prominent and so powerful; nor is it possible to deny that the great outburst of poetic genius in England in the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was an expression of a heightened and intensified national life. Naturally therefore, and not inappro priately, those periods of literature have been associated with the most prominent names of the time in politics. It is equally clear that the greatest historical event Since the Reformation had a profound influence upon literature, and that, for a; Qefiod. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.