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Unit 10: The Augustan Age or the Triumph of Neoclassicism (Pope and Heroic Couplet, Poetic Diction and Satire)

Wordsworth’s attack on the 18th century poetic diction served to stress the need of simplicity both Notes
in theme and treatment. But diction has continued to flourish, despite Wordsworth’s condemnation
of it. The verbal art of both Keats and Tennyson is beyond praise, and many of their verbal
beauties are echoed by the poetic diction of the Pre-Raphaelities / Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris.
Rossetti’s love of ‘stunning’ words is well-known and Swinburne is equally noted for his sensuous
epithets and verbal music. Rossetti’s influence on the next generation of poets was great; some
adopted his idiosyncrasies; few bettered his example. He helped to introduce a new school of
poetry in which the diction diverged as far from the ‘real language of men’ as in any part of the
eighteenth century.

Notes The reaction in our own times against this movement has been as vigorous as that of
Wordsworth was in 1801 against the ‘gaudiness’ of false ‘poetic diction’ of the 18th
century.
Robert Bridges is a great stylist of the 20th century, who tries consciously to cultivate an effective
and elevated poetic style. He is a great craftsman with words. His poetry abounds in vivid word-
pictures. T.S. Eliot has a peculiar diction of his own. It has been called, “a mosaic of quotations and
allusions.” His poetry is the poetry of the city, and hence quite rightly his vocabulary and his
imagery are drawn from the facts and experiences of city life. He is terse and epigrammatic, so
terse and epigrammatic that often it becomes difficult to follow his sense.
In short, poets in all ages have used poetic diction i.e. a poetic language which is different from the
language both of prose and of everyday use. From time to time such devices to embellish and
elevate the language of poetry have been much criticised, but despite such criticism poets have
continued to use them.

Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. Pope defines this literary movement in his .................... .
2. Pope was a poet whose mastery of the heroic couplet has kept him in the canon of ....................
since the 18th century.
3. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by .................... in the Legend of good women
and the Canterbury Tales.
4. The heroic couplet is often identified with the English Baroque works of John Dryden
and .................... .
5. Pope uses 'sol' in place of the .................... .

10.4 Satire

Satire differs from humour in that it has a definite moral purpose. “It is our purpose, Crites, to
correct/and punish with our laughter......” says Mercury in Cynthia’s Revels. The satirist deliberately
alienates our sympathies from those whom he describes, and as the true humorist is apt to pass
from comedy to romance, and from romance to tragedy, so the satirist not infrequently ends by
finding rage and disgust overpower his sense of the ridiculous. Ben Jonson passes from the comedy
of Every Man in his Humour to the bitterness of Volpone. Swift from the comparative lightness of
Gulliver in Lilliput, to the savage brutality of the Hounyhymns. But of such satire - pure and simple
- few examples are to be found in Chaucer.
The fact is that satire is not Chaucer’s natural bent. He is too quick-witted not to see through sham
and humbug, but his interest lies in portraiture rather than in exposure. His object is to point life as
he sees it, to hold up the mirror to nature, and, as has justly been said, “a mirror has no tendency, “it
reflects, but it does not, or should not, distort. But if Chaucer is too tolerant and genial, too little of
a preacher and enthusiast, for a satirist, his wit has often a satiric turn.
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