Page 77 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes Various devices were used to achieve a noble, pure and exalted diction, a diction proper for poetry
meant for refined and cultured audiences. First, Periphrasis or Circumlocution or a roundabout
way of saying things was widely used. In this way, efforts were made to avoid the vulgar, the
archaic and the technical. Thus Pope uses ‘finny creatures’ for ‘fish’, ‘Velvet plain’ for a green table,
‘two-handed engine’ for a pair of scissors and so on. Secondly Latin words and Latin constructions
were abundantly used to impart dignity and elevation. Thus Pope uses ‘Sol’ in place of the sun.
Words are frequently used both by Dryden and Pope in their original Latin sense. Thirdly, Figures
of Speech, more particularly Personifications and Hyperbole, were abundantly used to decorate
the language and to impart to it force, dignity and effectiveness. An instance of personification and
Hyperbole may be given from The Rape of the Lock:
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box
The Tortoise here and Elephant unite
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white
Another remarkable feature of Pope’s diction is his use of antithesis. This he uses it to produce the
mock-heroic effect:
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball.
Effective, telling, vivid and pictorial images (similes and metaphors) are used by Pope with great
frequency and abundance. There are frequent revisions and everything that is superfluous or inapt
is carefully eschewed. In this way, the diction acquires not only clarity, elevation and perfection,
but also epigrammatic terseness and condensation. There are more quotable lines in Pope than in
any other English poet outside Shakespeare.
Pope, in short, represents the best as well as the worst in the poetic diction of the 18th century. He
is the clearest as well as the most correct of English poets, but there is also much in his diction that
is unnatural and artificial. He bewitched and dazzled his age with his highly ornate and polished
language and the various stylistic devices used by him were imitated throughout the century.
Even the pre-romantics were unable to break free from his influence. Gray, Collins, Crabbe, Blake
and Burns all show his influence. The substance of their poetry is much nobler, but their style
continues to be stilted and artificial. Indeed, the full flowering of romanticism in their poetry is
checked and retarded by the dead hand of the past. Circumlocution Personification, Latinism etc.,
all continue to be used by them and their diction continues to be as artificial and unnatural as that
of Pope and his imitators.
It was against this innane and affected poetic diction that Wordsworth raised his powerful voice.
Reacting against the artificiality of the poetic diction of Pope and the ‘Popians’, he maintained that
the language of poetry should be a selection of language really used by men, and added that,
“there is no essential difference between the language of prose and poetry.” However, his own
practice shows that there is such an essential difference. Language is a matter of vocabulary, the
choice and selection of words, as well as of their arrangement. Wordsworth follows his theory of
poetic diction only in so far as the selection of words or vocabulary is concerned, and not always
even in this respect. As far as the arrangement of words is concerned, he frequently uses inverted
constructions. Poems like the Immortality Ode can by no stretch of imagination be regarded as
having been written in the language of every day use. Moreover, as Coleridge was quick to point
out, metre medicates the whole atmosphere, and exigencies of rhyme and metre determine the
diction of a poet. Hence it is bound to be different from ordinary language. It should also be
remembered that the end of poetry is to give aesthetic pleasure and the use of ornament is an
element in that pleasure. Poetry is ‘musical speech’, and so the words used by a poet must be
selected both with reference to their sense and their sound. Obviously, for all these reasons, we
cannot agree with Wordsworth when he says that there is no essential difference between the
language of poetry and the language of prose.

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