who reads the Romantics?
Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu)
Mon, 19 Jan 1998 13:00:57 -0500 (EST)
[Jim]
> They influenced a whole segment of society--really, society at large so deeply
> and profoundly--that you do not have to have read them to have been influenced
> by them.
Case in point. Earlier in this discussion, someone quoted the
first half-line of Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much with Us" and
wondered (apologetically) if it was from Emerson. The presence of poets
(among other figures who serve as sites of cultural production) in the
West in inescapable. Much of our working lexicon as speakers of English
derives from writers we may never have read. We often think in chunks of
language that are availalbe as working semantic units--"The world is too
much with us," "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," "All
the world's a stage," etc.--without, as Jim says, ever having read them in
their original contexts.
Clinamen
-------------------------------------------
mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu