[lit-ideas] Rima Rima
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:50:16 EST
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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