Upon looking over my primary sources for going towards my senior thesis, something that caught my attention was the consistent presence of Grecian antiquity(ies) throughout romantic poetry. As Romantic poetry is typically seen as a response or contradiction to Neoclassical poetry, poetry focused on logic and reason, Romanticism focuses on raw emotion: emotion that cannot easily be described. Aside from the sensual verbiage and language that works to illuminate the sublime, Romantic poetry commonly features Greek gods, such as Proteus and his triton in Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us”, or Keats famous “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Interestingly, as these are all poems I am using to examine the use of ekphrasis, I was left with one major question- what is it about Greek art that intrigues/inspires Romantic poets, particularly European Romantic poets so much? The obvious seems to be that Greek art was highly focused on the aesthetics, but I think there is likely more to it.
As I previously mentioned, while neoclassical poetry involves logic and reason, it also involves an admiration for visual arts and literature (mainly inspired or found in Roman and Greek antiquity). Perhaps then, the two eras have a fair amount in common and Romanticism may have merely been an addition to Neoclassicism rather than a response to it. To go back to the Keats poem I had previously mentioned, “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and its ekphrastic nature involves many neoclassicist concepts. As the neoclassic approach is concerned with visual art, so is the narrator, as he remains preoccupied on the antique urn that gives him a sort of idealism about life. Though, while using these concepts, the narrator does take a very Romantic approach towards the art in appreciating how art can contribute to the sublime- how interpretating these antiquities can involve complex emotions that logic or reason cannot necessarily explain.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Romanticism”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism. Accessed 11 November 2024.
Irwin, David. “Neoclassical art”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Sep. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/art/Neoclassicism. Accessed 11 November 2024.
Keats, John. “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Chicago Review, vol. 8, no. 1, Jan. 1954, p. 76. https://doi.org/10.2307/25293011.
Another thing that might explain this focus on Greek art is the poets’ educations. They would have had a heavy emphasis on the classics during their early education, and I think that often times we come back to our roots as adults. Sometimes the things that are interesting to us as adults are things that have always interested us. Though this is obviously not the major reason they focus on antiquity I think could potentially be a small part of it. Plus, as you mentioned, Greek and Roman art is stunning, and who doesn’t want to write about beautiful things.
I also find it very interesting that there’s this obsession with physical Greek antiquities. I think it may be important for you to do some research into the classical education these poets most likely received — focused on the literature, languages, and history of Greece and Rome. What makes it interesting to me is that these poets move away from the huge literary corpus (all the ancient authors that had a revival in this period) to physical pottery and objects — they’re almost creating a literary tradition for it… Identification techniques for ancient pottery (time period, characters) were also probably not very codified and widespread at this time, so it gives the poets a lot more room to move around and explore…
Echoing the previous comments, the emphasis of classics in English education absolutely has a role to play. However, your discussion of neoclassical admiration for visual art and literature is also fascinating! Romanticism and Neoclassicism definitely have traits in common, the importance of aesthetic value being one of them. Subjectivity is a major focus of much of both romantic and neoclassical art, so it’s no wonder that Greek art became a common subject—firstly, English education had been fascinated by Greek myths, writing, and art for a long time. Secondly, because all of these things gained such immense cultural value, they likely gained a lot of subjective potential and aesthetic value to them, making them easy subjects for romanticists and neoclassicists alike. They have been taught long enough to English writers to gain a wide range of interpretations, causing a number of common cultural references, yet also adding an air of individuality to each new twist on “the classics”!