The intense and concentrated revolution in poetic taste in seventeenth-century England is traced from Donne’s idiom–subtle, complex, and shot through with unconventional moods–to the idiom of Dryden, which follows the taste for clarity, harmony, and propriety. More than poetry is involved in this revolt. The cultural and intellectual forces of the century made a change in taste inevitable by altering man’s way of looking at himself and his world.

Originally published in 1940.

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