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Quote by James Beattie

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The Minstrel: or, The Progress of Genius, with Other Poems

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James Beattie

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“At the very least, it was extraordinary in offering up a very real bequest to later poets of a multi-layered hero figure, practical lessons in poetic direction and conviction, guidance in poetic technique, and, for some, a treasury of quotations, images and impressions. When aggregated, the seed capital of the poem is considerable. All this may be true but there remains a suspicion that this verdict would underplay the depth of the poem's heritability: perhaps a more accurate hypothesis is that The Minstrel had a pervasive spiritual and intellectual influence on other poets, even to the point of inspiration. Nothing like it had been written before and there are signs that it catalysed prospective poets as they grappled with their own poetical identities and sought to make a living from their talents.”

PoetsQuotationsJames BeattieThe MinstrelHeritabilityHero FigureIntellectual InfluencePoetic Technique
Book:Scottish Literary Review, Autumn/Winter 2025
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“There is no single thing... that is so cut and dried that one cannot attend to its secret whisper which says 'I am more than just my appearance'. If each object quivers with readiness to imply something other than itself, if each perception is a word in a poem dense with connotations, then the poet's selection of any given subject of speculation will become... a means of attuning himself to the rhythms and harmonies of reality at large. ... The notion of a network of correspondence is not an outmoded Romantic illusion: it represents a crucial intuition...”

PoetryPerceptionIntuitionPoetsRomanticismSymbolismCorrespondencePoetics
Book:Figures of Reality
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