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Lexical History Lexical History
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The Genius as Poet The Genius as Poet
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Toward Young’s Inspired Genius Toward Young’s Inspired Genius
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Genius as a Lyric Species Genius as a Lyric Species
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The Genius of Poets The Genius of Poets
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The Genius vs. the Hero The Genius vs. the Hero
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The Minstrel The Minstrel
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References References
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13 The Poet as Genius
Get accessMarshall Brown is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington and editor of Modern Language Quarterly. His books include The Shape of German Romanticism (Cornell Univ. Press, 1979), Preromanticism (Stanford Univ. Press, 1991), Turning Points: Essays in the History of Cultural Expressions (Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), The Gothic Text (Stanford Univ. Press, 2004), “The Tooth That Nibbles at the Soul”: Essays on Music and Poetry (Univ. of Washington Press, 2010), and, as editor, the Romanticism volume of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
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Published:05 December 2016
Cite
Abstract
The use of genius to mean “innate intellectual or creative power of an exceptional or exalted type” (OED) emerged in the 1770s, in the writings of William Duff and Alexander Gerard. Until then, “genius” meant only a talent of one kind or another, generally subordinated to taste or discipline. Even “original genius” was merely one kind among others. It became something more special in Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition, and was by Young and Duff particularly associated with lyric poetry. But even in them, genius is a psychological characteristic; in eighteenth-century usage poetic geniuses were rough and untutored, or naive prodigies, or rustic and primitive, or otherwise socially isolated. In much poetry of the era the (typically solitary) genius replaces the (social and military) hero. Even as late as Goethe’s last novel, William Meister’s Journeymanship, genius is a guiding spirit (a Genius in German) and not a sublime power of soul (Genie).
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