{"id":262,"date":"2012-04-16T19:07:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T19:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/?p=262"},"modified":"2012-07-02T17:16:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T17:16:22","slug":"sir-walter-alexander-raleigh-1861-1922","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/afterlife\/sir-walter-alexander-raleigh-1861-1922\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922)"},"content":{"rendered":"

1900 \u2018A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Raleigh\u2019s poem ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner’ (1900) makes fun of the verbosity of some eighteenth-century poets, thus backwardly praising the tight storytelling of the popular ballad. Raleigh uses ‘Spens’ as the example which need not be tampered. He humourously expands the four-line opening of ‘Spens’ into twenty-two lines. His king expounds on his own leadership and evokes the Greek and Roman Gods for guidance. What is simply in ‘Spens’:<\/p>\n

The king sits in Dumferling toune,
\nDrinking the blude-reid wine:
\nO quhar will I get guid sail\u00f2r,
\nTo sail this schip of mine?<\/p>\n

Raleigh expands, in part, to this:<\/p>\n

In a famed town of Caledonia\u2019s land,
\nA prosperous port contiguous to the strand,
\nA monarch feasted in right royal state;
\nBut care still dogs the pleasures of the Great,
\nAnd well his faithful servants could surmise
\nFrom his distracted looks and broken sighs
\nThat though the purple bowl was circling free,
\nHis mind was prey to black perplexity.<\/p>\n

Raleigh recognizes that the strength of the ballad form, its emotional force, is in its direct unadorned narrative. Through parody he shows how the more loquacious verse of the eighteenth century loses this quality. Raleigh\u2019s poem ends:<\/p>\n

Verse II<\/p>\n

He spake: and straightway, rising from his side
\nAn ancient senator, of reverend pride,
\nUnsealed his lips, and uttered from his soul
\nGreat store of flatulence and rigmarole;
\n\u2014All fled the Court, which shades of night invest,
\nAnd Pope and Gay and Prior told the rest.<\/p>\n

Sources: ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens In the Eighteenth Century Manner’, in Laughter from a Cloud<\/em>, foreword by Hilary Raleigh (London: Constable, 1923), 207-08. PoemHunter<\/a>; Univ.of Toronto<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1900 \u2018A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner\u2019 Raleigh\u2019s poem ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner’ (1900) makes fun of the verbosity of some eighteenth-century poets, thus backwardly praising the tight … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30366],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afterlife"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sirpatrickspens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}