Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century

For some years, the criticism of eighteenth-century poetry has verged on becoming a footnote to studies of the novel. While there have been noteworthy studies of individual poets, notably Pope, and important studies by Thomas Lockwood, Donna Landry, Steven Zwicker, and Paul Hunter, public verse has often seemed an afterthought in the critical revolution of the times. But a new generation of scholars--John Goodridge, Desiree Hellegers, Tanya Caldwell, and William Christmas among them--have made important arguments for the erstwhile backwaters of poetry in the long eighteenth century: georgic, natural philosophy, translation, and laboring class verse. With the publication of Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire, Suvir Kaul confirms both his status as one of our leading critics of eighteenth-century poetry and the significance of public verse in England's efforts to cheerlead its way to international prominence. He has produced a learned and provocative assessment of the myriad poetic responses to nationalism, empire-building, trade, and slavery between 1660 and 1800.

Given the wide range of verse and the sheer number of poems published in the long eighteenth century, Kaul admits that his study is not exhaustive, but he has read widely and produced sustained readings of canonical verse by John Dryden, James Thomson; and Oliver Goldsmith; important readings of poems that many of us know we should have read by Edmund Waller, John Dyer, and William Cowper; and brief but telling analyses of little-known works by George Lyttleton, Elizabeth Bentley, and Richard Glover. This list is suggestive rather than comprehensive: Kaul has important arguments to make about almost every "major" poet in the period, and scholars working on everyone from Andrew Marvell to Hannah More will need to consult and think very carefully about his analyses.

Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire explores how the ideology of an expansionist economics, both commercial and colonial, made some Englishmen see themselves as the wealthy heirs of Rome's imperial legacy yet, at the same time, provoked fears of luxury, excess, corruption, and national degeneration. In different ways, these poets recognize the paradox that the price of commercial wealth and national liberty is breaking bread with the dark forces of greed and aggrandizement. If the rhetoric of liberty for poets such as Goldsmith, More, and Cowper threatens to become window-dressing for England's involvement in absentee landlordism in Ireland, slavery in the Caribbean, and the impoverishment of England's displaced workers at home, it also suggests a political awareness of the costs of gentlemanly privilege, property ownership, and the dictates of a profit-driven economy. His analyses allow Kaul to argue that it is in the poetry of the period that the ideologies of nationhood are forged. In this respect, he makes a persuasive case for the importance of eighteenth-century poetry in treating topics--slavery, poverty, and moral corruption--that characteristically remain marginal in the novels of the period.

In extending the work of previous critics on literature and empire, Kaul encourages his readers to think through the aesthetic problems that eighteenth-century verse traditionally has posed for critics. This is no small task. The public nature of much poetry linked conceptions of genre to sociohistorical and political concerns: hybrid verse forms, as in Dyer's georgic-mercantile epic-patriotic anthem The Fleece, often employed ready-to-hand themes of national greatness and prosperity intended to shore up specific governmental policies or to appeal to patrons either lined up or sought. In many of these poems, the belief that England had to trade to survive was so engrained that aesthetic grandeur becomes indistinguishable from op-ed polemics. By dealing persuasively with aesthetic as well as ideological issues, Kaul makes a compelling case for the significance of poetry in foregrounding the socioeconomic values and assumptions that the novel often tucked away into dependent clauses. Most importantly, Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire asks probing questions about the persistence of the rhetoric of nation, trade, and empire during the long eighteenth century--questions that suggest ways to refine or redefine these terms so important to postcolonial studies. This valuable and engaging study deserves a wide readership; it should become a standard work in a now burgeoning field.