Canadian Literature in English by William J. Keith

Frequently employed forms now were ottava rima (for satire), the Spenserian stanza (for framing picturesque scenes and momentary insights) and the sonnet. The result was that from the 1820s writers turned to such poets as Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley and Thomas Moore for their models. Whereas the relatively fluid and continuous form of blank verse seems to have been a fitting vehicle for such subjects as the sublime spectacle of Niagara Falls and the 'liquid grandeur' of the St Lawrence, the rational order of the heroic couplet was a formalistic means by which the early poets affirmed and reflected a sense of governance in their environment and in themselves.Īfter 1825 the influence of romanticism (which had been present in Canada earlier, just as neoclassicism would continue to be felt later) came increasingly to be evident in Canadian poetry. Among the major influences on the poetry of this period were the heroic couplets of English poets Alexander Pope and Oliver Goldsmith and the blank verse of James Thomson's The Seasons (1726-46), a poem with evident application to a land with Canada's seasonal variations. Before 1825 the verse written in what would become Canada (primarily in Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) was largely dominated by neoclassical models. It is convenient to divide pre-Confederation poetry, somewhat arbitrarily but justifiably, into two chronological categories: poetry written before 1825 and that written between 18. Lawrence' Stream?' Besides pointing to a major concern of pre-Confederation poetry - the representation in European verse forms of the Canadian physical and social landscapes - MacKay's question anticipates similar concerns in much later Canadian poetry, suggesting the continuity that exists through poetry written in Canada from the earliest to the most recent times. MacKay asks: 'Ye who, in stanzas, celebrate the Po,/Or teach the Tyber in your strains to flow,/How would you toil for numbers to proclaim/The liquid grandeur of St.

Addressing the poets of the classical, European tradition in Quebec Hill (1797), J.

Canadian Literature in English by William J. Keith