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E212: British Literature since 1760 Thomas Love Peacock Study Questions Alfred Drake. Office: 423 UH | W 12-1 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com "The Four Ages of Poetry" (1820) 1. Underlying the satirical humor in Peacock's essay are some serious accusations against poetry in the modern era. How does Peacock's description of ancient poetry's origin and early development begin to undermine the authority of poets in any age? How, for example, does he link poetry to political power and otherwise question its dignity and status? 2. Peacock does not entirely condemn poetry--how does he explore its value to the supposedly primitive people who originated it? 3. What characterizes the "golden age" and the "silver age" of poetry, respectively? Why is poetry's development during the silver age also "a step towards its extinction"? What begins to happen to the status of poetry when "the sciences of morals and of mind" begin to move forward? 4. What characterizes the "age of brass" in ancient poetry? What led to this stage--what demands were made upon poetry, and how did poets respond? 5. How does Peacock trace the development of the golden age of more recent poetry--what subject matter did it emphasize, and why were Shakespeare and his contemporaries able to get away with the wildness they showed in their dealings with historical and cultural specificity? 6. How, according to Peacock, did certain silver-age poets' way of describing nature lead to the modern-day "age of brass" as represented by the Lake Poets Wordsworth and Coleridge? What startling observations does he offer concerning the Lake Poets' claims that they can perceive nature in a new and profound manner? 7. Peacock has many good things to say about the march of scientific discovery and its practical benefits. Towards the essay's conclusion, what characterization does he offer of the mindset that makes such advances possible? How does the scientist approach nature and "all external things"? 8. Peacock's utilitarian/scientist journalist narrator asserts that as reason and the scientific method advance, poetry will fade into oblivion. In varying degrees of sophistication, that argument is still with us. Without simply returning to romantic-era claims, how might poetry be defended today? To what extent is poetry still valuable? How so? To whom? Another version of those questions would be, "why is poetry still with us even though science and technology are far more advanced now than they were in Peacock's day? What would we lose if poetry and other kinds of art simply disappeared?" Edition: Thomas Love Peacock Society's electronic text.
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