GEORGIAN POETS –
THE 1960-1970
Georgian poetry was the tittle of a series of anthologies that shows the work of a school of English poetry in
the early reign of King George V. Body of lyrical poetry produced in Britain in
the early 20th century. Desiring to make new poetry more accessible to the
public, Rupert Brooke and Sir Edward Marsh produced five anthology
volumes-containing works by Robert Graves, Walter de la Mare, Siegfried Sassoon
(1886–1967), and others-called Georgian Poetry (1912–22). “Georgian” was meant to suggest the
opening of a new poetic age with the accession in 1910 of George V; however,
much of the Georgians' work was conventional, and the name came to refer to
backward-looking literature rooted in its time.
1)*www.answers.com/topic/georgian-poets
Georgian Poets were mainly
blamed for their traditionalism (imitation of their forefathers), for being
escapists (attempting to escape from urban and industrial life) and for
cultivating false simplicity.
In fact, Georgian
Poetry was most interesting than that: the Georgian movement was a
reaction against the poetic establishment, embodied by Newbolt. The first two
volumes include many poems but fail to include such poets as Owen (who thought
himself Georgian). Marsh is responsible for the Georgian anthology, he made it
on subjective grounds: "this volume is issued in the belief that English
poetry is now once more putting on a new strength and beauty".
As a result, the
Georgian Movement is quite informal and Georgian Poetry is
not homogeneous. There are two phases in Georgian Poetry :
Phase 1 is the real
Georgian Poetry. In 1912, Georgian Poetry was hailed as symbolizing "the
new rebellion in English poetry". Poets have in common to challenge the
establishment, the current trends in poetry:
By contrast, the aims of
Georgian Poetry in Phase 2 was to give a subjective personal response to
personal concern to return to Wordsworth and to use a straightforward and
casual language (that is why they were blamed for cultivating simplicity).
The Georgian general
recommendation was the giving up of complex forms so that more people could
read poetry. Georgian Poetry was to be English but not aggressively
imperialistic, patheistic rather than atheistic; and as simple as a child's
reading book.
The Georgian poets
were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared in a series of
five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and
edited by Edward Marsh. The first volume contained poems written in 1911 and
1912. The poets included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H.
Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon.
2)*www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/litterms.htm
The period of publication
was sandwiched between the Victorian era, with its strict classicism, and
Modernism, with its strident rejection of pure aestheticism. The common features
of the poems in these publications were romanticism, sentimentality and
hedonism.
Later critics have
attempted to revise the definition of the term as a description of poetic
style, thereby including some new names or excluding some old ones.
Henry Newbolt, writing in
the early 1930s, estimated that there were at least 1000 active British poets;
the vast majority of these would be recognisably 'Georgian', making the pool of
names close to unfathomable.
Georgian poets were blamed
for being traditionalists: they rejected the accepted practices of their days.
They tried to react and to follow the lead shown by Wordsworth a century
earlier, who wanted to "write in the real language of man". They were
not only reacting again but also trying to introduce some new keys innovations
into English poetry.
Georgian poets were said to
have ignored the time in which they lived (unlike Newbolt). They wanted to make
the poetry reading public, aware of the unpleasant faith of English society.
They introduced prostitutes and tramps in their poetry. Far from being
escapist, early Georgian Poetry relied on realism (cf Brook). To make poetry
relevant, they adopted a close reflection of real life, common and sordid. They
attempted to describe the emotional reality
Nature was an
obsession for the poets: it was used to explore other issues and as a means of
communication. Georgian Poetry puts a strong emphasis on emotional response. It
is an answer to the increasing complexity of dislocation of the modern world.
3)*www.skyminds.net/lit_gb/ww1_poetry.php
In general, the
conservatism that prevailed in the first decade of the twentieth century
resulted in patriotic and nationalistic issues often being addressed in the
poetry of the period. Consequently, this poetry frequently possessed a morally
didactic nature, in which an individual's personal response was largely
excluded. The Georgians were born from this poetical climate. (The majority of
poets that are often viewed as being part of this family acquired their status
as 'Georgian' with the inclusion of their poetry into Edward Marsh's Georgian
Poetry anthologies, which ran to five volumes from 1912 to 1922.) Although no
set guidelines were ever laid out as to what Georgian poetry should or should
not seek to achieve (unlike Pounds Imagism, for example), there was a general
reaction amongst them against the didactic nature of the major Victorian poets.
Moreover, they also shared a mutual dislike of the nationalistic and patriotic
verse of Edwardian's such as Kipling, Newbolt and Chesterton. In both cases,
the Georgian poets disliked and sought avoid the excesses in diction and
rhetoric of such verse, and the subsequent relegation of the individual that
occurred within it.
Consequently, the Georgians
shared the desire for reintroducing the individual and depicting a personal
response in their poetry. To do this, they commonly evoked the rural landscape
rather than looking towards the city for inspiration because their beliefs were
firmly entrenched in the traditional Romantic concept that individual subject
(and his or her poetry) is inextricably linked with the natural world. Common
to the 'big six' Romantic poets, they shared the belief that an improved world
"could be attained not in the afterlife, but in the real, material world
that they inhabited". Although not as innovative or explicit as the major
romantic writes, they were, arguably, equally committed in their poetry to
their forebear's ideals. Thus in line with this more personal and romantic mode
of poetry, poets in the Georgian mould favoured the use of a more simplistic
and subtle language rather than the didactic and aggressive one that was
employed by many of their predecessors and contemporaries. Walter encapsulates
their (general) poetic philosophy eloquently when he states, "they
deliberately avoided the roads their fathers had built and instead chose to
follow the lead set a century earlier by Wordsworth".
4)*www.poetsgraves.co.uk/glossary_poetic_terms_g.htm
However, when the
considering the Georgians as a movement or a poetic ideal, two important
distinctions need to be made. Firstly, there were essentially two movements,
with the second being different and, arguably, inferior to the first. Walter
draws this distinction by referring to Georgians and Neo-Georgians. In practical
terms, this distinction can be reasonably achieved with the separation of
Georgian Poetry I & II from volumes III & IV. It has been suggested
that the poetry in the first two volumes is, generally, of a higher quality
than that which appeared in the subsequent volumes, albeit with a few notable
exceptions (de la Mare for instance). From the innovative, the poetry became an
imitation of the work in previous volumes in that it has been accused of
employing a diluted romanticism, with any expression of a "personal and
profound emotional experience" absent from their compositions.
Although this evaluation is
open to question, it is nevertheless true that the reputation of the Georgians
has been negatively impacted in critical circles because of its association
with the Neo-Georgians. This is because these two movements are frequently
placed under the umbrella term of Georgianism, with the view that the same
quality of work was being produced throughout. Consequently, because the
Neo-Georgians are often viewed - rightly or wrongly - as largely fulfilling
"the negative expectations associated with the Georgian movement, […] they
have regrettably come to represent Georgianism for most critics".Clearly,
a result of regarding the Georgians and the Neo-Georgians together is that the
movement as a whole is frequently discredited, with poets such as de la Mare,
whose poetry was included in all five volumes, suffering.
The real gifts of Brooke, Davies, de la Mare, Blunden, and Hodgson should not be overlooked, but, taken as a whole, much of the Georgians' work was lifeless. It took inspiration from the countryside and nature, and in the hands of less gifted poets, the resulting poetry was diluted and middlebrow conventional verse of late Romantic character. "Georgian" came to be a pejorative term, used in a sense not intended by its progenitors: rooted in its period and looking backward rather than forward.5)
5)*www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Georgian_poets