Poetry: A Mirror for History

Art has always been influenced by the world in which it is created. Artists paint the world they see outside their window, and likewise, all that poets write is in some way a product of their environment. We can see these trends throughout history as the ebb and flow of poetic movements mirrors the phases the world is going through. To illustrate this, I will be focusing on a few movements in poetry, and placing them within the context of their time to illustrate the close ties between poetry and history. There are many other examples of poetic movements that reflect their historical backdrop which I will not discuss here, but I will go ahead and give two examples.

First, let’s take a look at the transcendentalists. Transcendentalism was a movement that began around 1790, and focused heavily on depictions of natural beauty and pastoral paradises. Poets from this movement often described, in considerable detail, idyllic natural settings, and were more about creating images than telling a story. The transcendentalist movement, I would argue, rose out of a fear of the destruction of nature, which makes sense, considering the time when it arose.

The industrial revolution started in 1760 (give or take.) This was when the world first saw deforestation in such massive amounts. The transcendentalists, whether they knew it or not, were driven by a need to experience nature, and share that experience with others, before it was too late. Their movement, I think, would not have happened at all had the industrial revolution never happened.

Another literary movement, realism, took hold in the late 1860’s, and lasted until roughly 1900. It focused on the everyday aspects of life, and had more of an emphasis on character rather than exciting events. It often depicted mundane, less than desirable settings, and often focused on the lives of the working class and poor. Let’s take a look at this in the context of what was going on during the latter half of the 19th century.

This time period was what is often referred to as the gilded age. It was a time when industrialized manufacturing was booming, and wealth was being produced in amounts never seen before. However, the problem was that all of this wealth was going to a very small number of people, while a large section of the population lived in poverty. In this context, we can see many artists, most commonly photographers, taking on an advocacy role. There was a push for a depiction of the world as it really was, without being watered down, and this reflected itself in poetry. New poets left behind the lofty and idealistic themes of the romanticists, and stepped toward depicting ordinary, simple things.