Poetic Truth as the Expression of Anxiety in the 19th-Century English Literature

Abstract

Abstract: Poetic truth as a concept emerges in England in its transition into the modern world at the turn of the 19th century. In opposition to scientific truth together with rationality, poetic truth gives expression to the anxiety of the intelligentsia towards the transition of society. The English Romantic poets, in inheritance of Humean Sentimentalism, emphasize imagination and fellow feelings on the premise of holism and common humanity. In the vein of Romanticism Victorian critics shift the focus on the epistemological value of poetry. While John Stuart Mill seeks to balance intellectual education with the cultivation of emotion, Matthew Arnold sticks to the elite culture against popular culture and social anarchy. Both scholars aim to cope with the cultural crisis by advocating poetic truth and the comprehensive cultivation of human mind.

Key words: poetic truth, transitional anxiety, Enlightenment, culture

Gao Xiaoling. Poetic Truth as the Expression of Anxiety in the 19th-Century English Literature[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018, 40(4): 47-57.

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