[lit-ideas] Rima Rima

The Cockney School of Classicism
 
 
Further to P. Stone and now D. Ritchie's comments -- this from wiki on  Keats:
 
----
 
His Ode on a Grecian Urn
 “is a work of  
what I want to call Cockney  classicism  
Cockney poems  like ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn” ...
The term Cockney  School came in the  form of 
hostile  reviews in Blackwood's  Magazine in 1817. 
Each of the writers was derided for a slightly different   quality.  
Keats, for example, was accused of "low diction" for rhyming  

"thorns"

and

"fawns"

in "Sleep and Poetry" and  other rhymes ['morn' and 'return' in "Ode", etc.  
JLS] which suggested  a  working class speech.

Then let us clear away the choaking thorns 
From round its gentle  stem; let the young fawns

Keats  shows a real WEAKNESS, as  
a lack of classical scholarship, the use of  Cockney rimes like 
 
higher
Thalia

ear
Clytherea
 
thorn
fawn." 
 
(Cited in Colvin, _Keats_, p. 307). 


“The term,  'Cockney school', was an attack on the  
class   background of  the author(s) 
and their aspirations to the highest level  
of  the  literati"

This 'vulgar' ideology ... were offensive  to  the  
Blackwoods review staff, and the cultural and class  background of  the  
authors was introduced as a mechanism. 
On  the other hand, Percy Bysshe Shelley was  
accused of being similarly  offensive  politically, but the reviewers  
excused him for his  genius (and, of  course, his high birth).

What was  offensive to the establishment was that that lower class  persons 
like  Keats might emerge.

Cheers,
 
JL
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