SOURCE: “Praelectiones Academicae. 1844,” in English Poetic Theory 1825-1865, Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 46-65.

In the following essay, Warren studies Keble's poetic theory as explicated in his Praelectiones Academicae. Warren observes that for Keble the basic function of poetry is as a psychological and spiritual catharsis.

As Professor of Poetry at Oxford over a period of ten years from 1831 to 1841, John Keble, priest, poet, and Tractarian, delivered a remarkable series of Latin lectures on the nature of poetry and the poetic practice of the major Greek and Roman poets. Collected and printed in 1844 under the general heading, Praelectiones Academicae Oxonii Habitae, Annis mdcccxxxii … mdcccxli, with the subtitle, De Poeticae Vi Medica, the lectures were praised at the time by Newman and others of Keble's Oxford friends; George Saintsbury in 1904 noticed them briefly but appreciatively—had literary criticism been more than a pastime with Keble, “he would, I think, twenty...