O for a Voice Like Thunder!: The Grand Style in English
Elijah Perseus Blumov
What do Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton, Racine and Hugo have in common? All are considered supreme poets in their respective cultures, and all were masters of a grand style. A grand style can take many forms: it can be oceanic and elaborate like Homer, rich and scintillating like Shakespeare, stately and stentorian like Milton, or even ecstatic and rhetorical like Whitman. In every case, however, a grand style indicates poetic language dialed to the highest verbal pitch: language filled with sonorous music, imaginative figuration, dazzling diction, and an aura of majesty.
Fine and well, you might say—but how does one actually write in a grand style? In fact, why should one write in a grand style in our postmodern 21st century? These are the guiding questions that this course will attempt to answer. Focusing on poetry in English, we will trace the chronological development of grand styles in our language, examining first some Elizabethans, followed by the mighty Milton, the Augustans, the Romantics, and finally, some fascinating, idiosyncratic efforts to create grand styles in modern poetry. At each step of the way, we will analyze the essential technical elements of these styles and practice incorporating them into our own poetry through periodic writing exercises.
