Angol filológiai tanulmányok III. [antikvár]

Angol Filológiai tanulmányok III. Debrecen, 1967 Hungarian Studies in English III. Hungary Charlotte Kretzoi THE CONCEPT OF POETRY IN COLONIAL AMERICA The bulk of writings published in Colonial America was in the form of prose. Travelogues and descriptions of the new land were clearly of utilitarian origin; in journals and histories important events and everyday labours were faithfully recorded for posterity. The most common and voluminous type of writing was inspired by the world beyond: religious tracts, published sermons and meditations. We find a great number of poets and occasional versifiers, mainly in New England and in the Middle Colonies: prose writers who often, for a brief moment, turned into poets as they interspersed their writings with lines of verse. The role and function of prose forms was to teach and inform the reader. Drama and fiction having been practically absent in the Colonial period, poetry was left to choose between possibilities arising from the concept of the aim of literature inherited from Horace: to teach and/or delight the reader. In England, where the first New Englanders had had their schooling, even the devotional trend of the metaphysical poetry^ was rich and sensuous enough to delight the reader, though its source of inspiration was religious: exultant and jubilant but not moralizing. The topics of Cavalier poets were entirely secular. Conversely, Puritan New Englanders were thoroughly conscious of the responsibility of the literati to God and their fellow countrymen, and therefore wanted in writing poetry to do something good and useful. The aim of delighting the reader was only secondary and even then, subject to the primary aim: Colonial American poets wished first of all to tcach. Individual poets inevitably came to the same conclusion, as a consequence of the prevailing concept of poetry in Colonial America. There had been an endless debate on the question whether the new settlers of America held poetry in great honour or condemned it. Outside New England, and especially in the South, the question seems to have been settled satisfactorily: Southerners admired classic poetry and standard English poets but were scornful of those who tried to imitate them or took up poetry as a profession, regardless of the merit of their output. No wonder that Virginia and Maryland did not breed poets in great number.^ Poetry was honoured but not the poetic spirit among living fellow-countrymen. To the image of the Renaissance gentleman belonged a knowledge of classic and Italian ' T. s. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets. 1921.—In: Selected Essays. 1953. - George Sandys finished his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Virginia.