Flowerets and Sounding Seas: a study in the affective structure of ‘Lycidas’ (1951)

Abstract

More insistently, perhaps, than any other poem in English, ‘Lycidas’ raises the purely æsthetic problem of how the emotions may be stirred by lines which at first are much less than perspicuous to the intellect and even after many readings remain obscure at two or three points. Johnson’s attack to one side, ‘Lycidas’ has received all but universal praise, couched often in language so high-pitched that it absorbs easily adjectives like ‘exquisite’, ‘thrilling’, ‘tremendous’, and ‘supreme’. Why is the emotional impact so powerful? A reply must be sought (I think) in the affective connotations of words, phrases, and images in formal combination; and it is worth finding because if in one of its aspects literature is history, in another, and not unimportant, aspect it is immediate experience.