Online Encyclopedia

Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.

PINDARICS

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 621 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
» Make a correction to this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Spread the word: del.icio.us del.icio.us it!

PINDARICS , the name by which was known a class of loose and irregular odes greatly in See also:

fashion in See also:England during the See also:close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th See also:century. The invention is due to See also:Abraham See also:Cowley, who, probably in See also:Paris—" a See also:place where he had no other books to See also:direct him "—and perhaps in 1650, found a See also:text of See also:Pindar and determined to imitate the See also:Greek See also:poetry in See also:English, without having comprehended the See also:system upon which Pindar's See also:prosody was built up. Cowley published, however, in 1656, fifteen Pindarique Odes, which became the See also:model on which countless imitators founded their pindarics. The erroneous See also:form of these poems, which were absolutely without discipline of structure, was first exposed by See also:Congreve, exactly See also:half a century later, he very justly describing them as " bundles of rambling incoherent thoughts, expressed in a like See also:parcel of irregular stanzas, which also consist of such another complication of disproportioned, uncertain and perplexed verses and rhymes." This is harsh, but it describes a pindaric with See also:absolute See also:justice. Cowley had not been aware that " there is nothing more See also:regular than the Odes of Pindar," and that his poems were constructed in See also:harmony with rigid prosodical See also:laws in See also:strophe, See also:antistrophe and See also:epode; " the See also:liberty which Pindar took in his See also:numbers, which has been so much misunderstood and misapplied by his pretended imitators, was only in varying the stanzas in different odes; but in each particular See also:ode they are ever correspondent one to another in their turns, and according to the See also:order of the ode." These excellent See also:critical remarks were made by Congreve in his Discourse on the Pindarique Ode of 1706, and from that date forward the use of pindarics ceased to be so lax and frantic as it had been during the previous fifty years. The See also:time had now passed in which such a critic as See also:Sprat could praise " this loose and unconfined measure " as having " all the See also:grace and harmony of the most confined." It began to be See also:felt that the English pindaric was a blunder founded upon a misconception. If we examine Cowley's " Resurrection," which was considered in the 17th century to be a model of the See also:style, and " truly pindarical," we find it to be a shapeless poem of 64 lines, arbitrarily divided, not into strophes, but into four stanzas of unequal See also:volume and structure; the lines which form these stanzas are of lengths varying from three feet to seven feet, with rhymes repeated in wilful disorder, the whole forming a See also:mere vague See also:caricature of Pindar's brilliant odes. The very laxity of these pindarics attracted the poets of the unlyrical close of the 17th century, and they served the purpose not only of See also:Dryden and See also:Pope, but of a See also:score of lesser poets, among whom See also:Oldham, Mrs See also:Behn, See also:Otway, Sprat, Flatman and many others were prominent. The pindaric became the almost necessary form in which to indite a poem of compliment on a See also:birth, a See also:wedding or a funeral. Although the See also:vogue of these forms hardly survived the See also:age of See also:Anne, something of the vicious tradition of them still remained, and even in the odes of See also:Wordsworth, See also:Shelley and See also:Coleridge the broken versification of Cowley's pindarics occasionally survives. See also:Tennyson's Ode on the See also:Death of the See also:Duke of See also:Wellington (1852) is the latest important specimen of a pindaric in English literature. (E.

End of Article: PINDARICS

Additional information and Comments

There are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML.
Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide.
Do not copy, download, transfer, or otherwise replicate the site content in whole or in part.

Links to articles and home page are always encouraged.

[back]
PINDAR (Gr. HivSapos, c. 522–443 B.c.) 		[next]
PINDARIS

Site © 2006 - Net Industries