John Keble Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Gregory H. Goodwin

Critical Essay by Gregory H. Goodwin

SOURCE: “Keble and Newman: Tractarian Aesthetics and the Romantic Tradition,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, Summer, 1987, pp. 475-94.

In the following essay, Goodwin interprets Keble's aesthetic theory in relation to the Romantic Tradition, arguing that Keble's poetry is ignored by that tradition. Goodwin goes on to enumerate areas of divergence in the aesthetics of Keble and of his Tractarian contemporary John Henry Newman.

John Henry Newman was the theologian of the Tractarian Movement, but John Keble was its poet. Any inquiry into the thinking of the Tractarians on poetry and literature may end with Newman, but it should begin with Keble. Keble's greatest contribution to the Oxford movement and to English literature was The Christian Year. This book of devotional verse, first published in 1827, went through ninety-five editions during Keble's lifetime, and “at the end of the year following his death, the number had arisen to...
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