Aesthetics

Abstract

One could argue for a long time as to whether Watts was more of a late Metaphysical than an early preromantic poet. But to conclude, as in all reason one would have to, that he was a bit of both, raises more questions than it solves. What is the connection between Metaphysical and Romantic ? Does Watts in some special way reveal the missing link in a long-term evolutionary process? Does Watts, in his aesthetic theory and poetic practice, illustrate a transitional moment between the old and the new, in the same way as the body of his thought marks the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the modern consciousness? If it is Watts’s classicism which constitutes this transitional moment, how is this part and parcel of a body of poetry at once Metaphysical and Romantic?