American Criticism: A Study in Literary Theory from Poe to the PresentHoughton Mifflin, 1928 - 273 pages |
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æsthetic American Aristotle artist assertion attain beauty Carlyle century classical Coleridge conception creative creed culture Dante democracy divine doctrine Emerson English essay ethical Europe example experience expression fact faculty faith feeling feudal French Revolution genius give Goethe Greek harmony Homer human humanist idea ideal imagination impressionist inspiration intellectual intuition kind Leaves of Grass literary criticism literature living Lowell Lowell's means melancholy ment merely Milton mind modern moral nature naturistic never organic passage passion past perfect philosophy Philosophy of Composition Plato pleasure Plutarch Poe's poem poet poetic poetic principle poetry Preface principles prose Puritan qualities realism reality reason regarded relation religion romantic romanticism sense sentiment Shakspere soul spirit supernal theory things thought tion to-day tradition Transcendental true truth ture unity universal verse virtue vision Walt Whitman Whitman whole words Wordsworth writes
Popular passages
Page 29 - It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone.
Page 63 - There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, pre-exist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.
Page 64 - For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, — a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
Page 72 - The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body.
Page 19 - Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.
Page 114 - Wise men have said are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys, And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Page 249 - This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.
Page 62 - Aurelius is not a great writer, a great philosophymaker; he is the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.
Page viii - The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.
Page 30 - ... the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the soul, quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart, or of that truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For in regard to passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade rather than to elevate the Soul.