Odes of Absorption in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century

This essay argues for less absolute and instantaneous borders between the Restoration and mid-eighteenth-century phases of the ode form. It locates in the Restoration ode certain characteristics typically associated with the midcentury ode, including moments of inward vision and a blurring of boundaries between the poet's calling voice and the invoked object. Speakers of Restoration odes experience reflexive exchanges with their addressees, taking on qualities of the personified abstractions they summon. Such readings demonstrate the evolution of the ode form in progress and argue that interest in the imagination begins earlier in the period than is often acknowledged.