Reading: (1) Friedrich Schlegel, selections (CT, 429–435)
        (2) William Wordsworth, Preface to the Second Edition of “Lyrical Ballads” (CT, 437–446)

        Question (for one-page exercise): Explain one element of either Schlegel’s or Wordsworth’s conception of poetry (choose one) that makes it different from previous conceptions.

        Length: 4–6 pages

        Question: Most of the writers that we have read invoke “nature” in some fashion or other as a standard of excellence in poetry. Explain the views of three of the four authors listed below, as represented by those writings of theirs that have been assigned, with regard to the significance of nature for our understanding or evaluation of poetry. Compare the views of your chosen three authors by considering what each would say, or, as the case may be, does say about something in Shakespeare. This “something” may be a particular play, genre, character, or scene, or even perhaps Shakespeare’s work as a whole. (For your guidance, I cite some relevant phrases of each author.)

         (1)  Sidney, An Apology for Poetry. The poet “doth grow in effect another nature” (CT, 145a); in poetry “all virtues, vices, and passions” are “in their own natural seats laid to the view” (148b).
         (2) Pope, An Essay on Criticism; Preface to the Works of Shakespear. “Nature affords at least a glimm’ring light” (Essay, 21); “Those rules of old [. . .] are nature still, but nature methodized” (88–89); “Nature and Homer were, he found, the same” (134); “His [viz., Shakespeare’s] characters are so much nature herself, that ’tis a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her” (Preface, p. 460).
         (3) Hume, Of the Standard of Taste. There is a “relation, which nature has placed between the form [that exists in a literary production] and the sentiment [with which we respond to it]” (CT, 310a); “there are certain qualities in objects, which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings” (311a); “The general principles of taste are uniform in human nature” (314a).
         (4) Johnson, The Rambler, no. 4; excerpt from Rasselas; excerpt from Preface to Shakespeare. “It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature” (318b); “‘The business of a poet,’ said Imlac, ‘is to examine, not the individual, but the species,’ ” etc. (Rasselas, 319b); “Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature” (Preface to Shakespeare, 321b); “his drama is the mirror of life” (322a); “Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident” (322b).