The introduction of the history of literary aestheticism and poetry through different eras of English literature (Classical to postmodern) (part 9)

 

Restoration Poetry and Satire
Following the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I, the English Restoration period (from 1660-1689) saw the rise of literary elites, such as John Dryden. Perhaps one of the best-known names of English literary criticism, translation, drama, and poetry, Dryden made his name as a poet with his satirical mock-heroic, or mock-epic, poems. The most famous of these is a work written while he was Poet laureate, Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blew-Protestant Poet, T.S. Eliot.
It’s no secret that Dryden drafted this poem to mock Thomas Shadwell, another of Dryden’s contemporaries. Richard Oden, a Dryden scholar, explained that Dryden wrote the mock-heroic in response to Shadwell’s “offenses against literature.” Another of Dryden’s notable mock-heroics is Absalom and Achitophel, published in 1681 toward the end of the Restoration. While Dryden crafted his poetry more than 300 years ago, it’s still possible to get our hands on interesting editions of his works. For instance, you might keep an eye out for 19th-century editions of his work with gilt page edges, such as The Poetical Works of John Dryden.
The form of the mock-heroic and the use of the poetic form for satire didn’t end with Dryden. Alexander Pope, most famous for his work The Rape of the Lock (1712), carried on Dryden’s tradition of using poetry for comedic ends.
The Romantics and 19th-Century Poetry
we’re keeping this history brief, it’s difficult to provide any kind of full accounting of poetry in the 19th century. However, some important poets to consider include key Romantic poets such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. And naturally, if you’re familiar with American poetry in this period, you’ve come across some of the fireside poets like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and William Cullen Bryant.
In other circles, Walt Whitman revolutionized the 19th-century American spirit with his Leaves of Grass, while most of Emily Dickinson’s use of language fragments, hyphens, and em-dashes, written in the mid-to-late 1800s, were published only posthumously.