Leigh Hunt and the Poetry of FancyLeigh Hunt has long been stigmatized as Keats's evil genius, a superficial and mannered poet whose influence can be observed in such early poems as I Stood Tip-Toe and Sleep and Poetry. His portrayal as Harold Skimpole in Bleak House has also fostered an impression of triviality and selfishness in the minds of those who do not trouble to read him. Leigh Hunt and the Poetry of Fancy, so far the only book devoted exclusively to his verse, takes issue with these received opinions and argues that, overshadowed by the work of his more gifted contemporaries, Hunt's output has suffered repeatedly from invidious comparisons. Author Rodney Stenning Edgecombe suggests that we need to bring his admittedly minor poetry out of the shadows and, approaching it on its own sunny terms, find a way of enjoying its slightness and delicate charm. With this in mind, Edgecombe urges that we approach the poet as a rococo artist, using this aesthetic category to legitimize and focus the decorative impulse that informs his vision, and the escapism that sometimes led him, as a poet, to skirt many of the issues he so bravely fought for through his Radical journalism. Like Wordsworth, Hunt divided his output into loose generic categories when he began preparing a select edition of his poetry toward the end of his life, categories retained and amplified by H.S. Milford in his 1923 edition. Edgecombe has used these divisions as a way of organizing his study, and also of illustrating the immense range of forms and genres that the poet explored in the course of a long career. He furthermore offers close readings of many seminal poems in an effort to show that Hunt, dismissed by Carlyle as a sort of poetic "tinker," was a generally creditable craftsperson, and that when the occasion inspired him, he could write very well indeed. |
From inside the book
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Page 52
... canto of The Story of Rimini , Hunt allows these static elaborations ( called ecphrases ) to colonize virtually the whole of his narrative . Indeed the entire first canto resolves itself into an atmospheric cavalcade , its pageant ...
... canto of The Story of Rimini , Hunt allows these static elaborations ( called ecphrases ) to colonize virtually the whole of his narrative . Indeed the entire first canto resolves itself into an atmospheric cavalcade , its pageant ...
Page 64
... Canto 2 is subtitled " The Bride's Journey to Rimini , " a subtitle that effectively characterizes this section as a hodoiporikon or journey poem . Like many journey poems , it turns out to be the record of psychological change . Before ...
... Canto 2 is subtitled " The Bride's Journey to Rimini , " a subtitle that effectively characterizes this section as a hodoiporikon or journey poem . Like many journey poems , it turns out to be the record of psychological change . Before ...
Page 86
... canto 3 , Hunt had clearly exhausted the material he found most attractive , but he still had the rest of the story to tell . It is not surprising therefore that the poem should fall off to a marked degree in the last canto , and ...
... canto 3 , Hunt had clearly exhausted the material he found most attractive , but he still had the rest of the story to tell . It is not surprising therefore that the poem should fall off to a marked degree in the last canto , and ...
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Common terms and phrases
anapestic Ariadne Ballads beauty Blackwood's blank verse Blunden bower Byron canto Captain Sword charm claims Clarendon Press couplet critical decorative Dickens diction edited Edmund Blunden effect English epistle essay eyes fairy fancy Feast feel fête fête champêtre Francesca grace Gray Gray's H. W. Garrod Hampstead hand Hazlitt heart Hero and Leander Horace Houtchens human Hunt seems Hunt's Huntian Ibid idyll imagination impulse Jerome McGann John Keats Keats-Shelley landscape Leigh Hunt literary London look lovers lyric medieval Methuen Milford mind moral Musaeus narrative nature neoclassicism Nymphs o'er once Oxford University Press painting pastiche pastoral Paulo's pleasure poem poet poet's poetic poetry political recalls rhyme Rimini rococo romantic Romanticism satire sense Shelley Skimpole sonnet sort spirit Story of Rimini sublime suggests sweet takes things thought tion Titian turn vision Watteau William William Shakespeare words Wordsworth writing