In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an eclipse of interest in the rhymed heroic couplet. The poem is written in blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter with certain permissible substitutions of trochees and anapests to relieve the monotony of the iambic foot and with total disregard for the stanza form. The Prelude takes its unity from the fact that the central "hero" is its author. The epic is customarily defined as a long narrative poem which recounts heroic actions, commonly legendary or historical, and usually of one principal hero (from whence it derives its unity). The Prelude may be classed somewhat loosely as an epic it does not satisfy all the traditional qualifications of that genre. Its comparison with the great seventeenth-century epic is in some respects a happy one since Milton was (after Coleridge) Wordsworth's greatest idol. " The Prelude is the greatest long poem in our language after Paradise Lost," says one critic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |