Anna Letitia Barbauld and Eighteenth-Century Visionary Poetics

3 Satire, Antipastoral, and Visionary Poetics

chapter Thr ee Satire, Antipastoral, and Visionary Poetics “Corsica” and “The Invitation” are powerful examples of the difficulty that Barbauld faces in her efforts to imagine a world transformed, oriented on the principles of peace, justice, and liberty. The force of the poems’ resistance to her idealism—particularly in their portrayals of militarism and industrialism—in effect disrupts the linear representation of her visionary poetics, directing her attention away from the long poetic narrative toward a variety of shorter and thematically more divergent poems intended to examine smaller moments of human experience, presumably as a means of constructing a firmer poetic footing than she was able to achieve in “Corsica” and “The Invitation.” By choosing pieces of experience for close examination and forgoing the attempt to assume the wide span of human desire and endeavor in her vision, Barbauld seems to suggest, she may be able to avoid the sorts of obstacles that she encountered in the first two poems in the volume. The subjects that she chooses after “The Invitation ” are poetically more manageable, enabling her to maneuver her visionary interests and themes more nimbly and efficiently. Barbauld begins her effort in this new direction with a cluster of poems— “The Groans of the Tankard,” “On the Backwardness of the Spring 1771,” “Verses Written in an Alcove,” and “The Mouse’s Petition”—that appropriate and recast the prophetic, political, and pastoral interests of the first two poems. In this cluster , Barbauld effectively disposes of her earlier grounding poetic assumptions by relying on satirical and antipastoral strategies to clear an imaginative ground for a reconsideration of visionary poetics and the means by which meaningful vision might be constructed. From this point forward, she abandons the grand Miltonic poetic model and begins to implement a visionary poetic strategy that reaches across poetic forms and metrical strategies and embraces a wide range of poetic subjects in an attempt to assure that her foundational principles are always in view and guiding her engagement with the world. “The Groans of the Tankard,” a mock-heroic poem about drinking alcohol, gathers up some of the subjects on which Barbauld had touched in “The Invitation”— students, poets—and uses these subjects as the basis for a satire on conventional prophecy: 80 Anna Letitia Barbauld and Eighteenth-Century Visionary Poetics Of strange events I sing, and portents dire; The wondrous themes a reverent ear require: Tho’ strange the tale, the faithful Muse believe, And what she says with pious awe receive. (25) Her aim here seems to be designed to force the reader to reconsider the bourgeois idealism of “The Invitation,” where students and poets had figured prominently , as well as the prophetic investments of “Corsica,” not for the purpose of questioning the seriousness of these poems but rather their usefulness, or accuracy , as visionary representations of human history and human endeavor. In “Groans of the Tankard,” Barbauld’s muse seeks a distinctly new direction, as the poem meditates on the world of “strange events,” telling a strange tale that leaves behind, at least for the moment, the serious assumptions that previously had led her visionary efforts astray (again, she had “read the book of destiny amiss”). Satire, as Barbauld uses it in this instance, has a cleansing effect on her visionary imagination. The epigraph to “Groans of the Tankard” is taken from the thirteenth poem in the third book of Horace’s Odes, and in translation it reads “worthy of sweet wine,” making an apt and cogent introduction to the subject of Barbauld’s poem. But the ode from which the epigraph is taken, of course, is not satirical; rather, it is a serious poem that presents a topic of considerable complexity, and thus it serves as a counterpoint to Barbauld’s satire. The ode in its entirely reads as follows: O Bandusian fountain, brighter than crystal, Worthy of sweet wine, not lacking in flowers, Tomorrow we’ll honour you With a kid, whose brow is budding With those horns that are destined for love and battle. All in vain: since this child of the playful herd will Darken your ice-cool waters, With the stain of its crimson blood. The implacable hour of the blazing dog-star Knows no way to touch you, you offer your lovely Coolness to bullocks, weary Of ploughing, and to wandering flocks. And you too will be one of the famous fountains, Now I write of the holm oak that’s rooted above The cave in the rock where your...