Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Bibliographical note
- 1 The Definition of Literature
- 2 On Liberty of Interpreting
- 3 Evaluative Criticism, and Criticism without Evaluation
- 4 The Novel: a Critical Impasse?
- 5 The Sea Cook: a Study in the Art of Robert Louis Stevenson
- 6 On Kidnapped
- 7 On The Wind in the Willows
- 8 The Present Value of Tennyson
- 9 Robert Frost
- 10 Hopkins and Literary Criticism
- 11 T. S. Eliot: a Poet's Notebook
- 12 I. A. Richards
- 13 Yvor Winters: Counter-romantic
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Bibliographical note
- 1 The Definition of Literature
- 2 On Liberty of Interpreting
- 3 Evaluative Criticism, and Criticism without Evaluation
- 4 The Novel: a Critical Impasse?
- 5 The Sea Cook: a Study in the Art of Robert Louis Stevenson
- 6 On Kidnapped
- 7 On The Wind in the Willows
- 8 The Present Value of Tennyson
- 9 Robert Frost
- 10 Hopkins and Literary Criticism
- 11 T. S. Eliot: a Poet's Notebook
- 12 I. A. Richards
- 13 Yvor Winters: Counter-romantic
Summary
An English critic (A. Alvarez in The Shaping Spirit, 1958) has this to say about Frost's present reputation in England:
Perhaps the only modern American poet who really is concerned with manners is Robert Frost…I think this is why Frost has been so readily accepted in England; he is peculiarly congenial; we are easy with the tradition of country poetry, simple language and simple wisdom. American cosmopolitanism, even Eliot's, has always seemed a suspicious virtue, whereas Frost seems assured, he does not have to strive; he has New England behind him…
Alvarez, perhaps unwittingly, gives the impression (which I do not share) that Frost's poetry is widely read in England. But otherwise this implicit placing of Frost (‘country poetry, simple language and simple wisdom’) in a familiar minor niche does, I think, convey a true account of Frost's actual standing here. His reputation is based, it would seem, on a handful of well-known anthology pieces. ‘Everyone’ knows ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, just as ‘everyone’ knows Masefield's ‘Cargoes’, but that is not enough to put either poet in a context of active discussion. My own impression, for what it is worth, is that if Frost is mentioned at all, it is as a worthy but dull poet of about the rank of Masefield. And if this patronising attitude is accompanied by a more sympathetic note, that may derive from the memory of America's unofficial poet laureate as a white-haired old man pathetically inaudible at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration.
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- The Definition of Literature and Other Essays , pp. 168 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982