1726 in poetry

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Contents

Events

Works published

United Kingdom

"NambyPamby" first appears

Henry Carey's poem, Namby Pamby: or, a panegyrick on the new versification address'd to A----- P----, published this year [1] (some sources give the publication year as 1725), satirizes the poetry of Ambrose Philips, with the name a play on the first three letters of "Ambrose". Carey and others, including John Gay, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, used the term as a disparaging nickname for Philips, but this year Carey was the first to put it into print. Carey's poem, a reaction against the style of Philips' To the Honourable Miss Carteret of 1725, mimicked the cloying, overly sentimental reduplication in some verse Phillips had written for children [4] or as elegies of dead children, such as these opening lines from Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in Her Mother’s Arms: [5]

Timely blossom, infant fair,
Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn and every night
Their solicitous delight

Compare with Carey's lampoon of this year:

All ye poets of the age,
All ye witlings of the stage …
Namby-Pamby is your guide,
Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride.
Namby-Pamby, pilly-piss,
Rhimy-pim'd on Missy Miss
Tartaretta Tartaree
From the navel to the knee;
That her father's gracy grace
Might give him a placy place.

In The Dunciad (1733), Pope would also make fun of Philips: "Beneath his reign, shall [...] Namby Pamby be prefer'd for Wit!" [4] Pope despised Philips for both political and professional reasons, in part because Whig critics such as Joseph Addison had compared Philips' rustic verse favorably to that of Pope, a Tory. [5] Within a generation, "Namby Pamby" began to broaden its meaning, so that in William Ayres' Memoirs of the life and writings of Alexander Pope of 1745, Jonathan Swift was said to be referring to the "Namby Pamby Stile" of writing. By 1774, the meaning had broadened further, covering anything ineffectual or weak, so that The Westmoreland Magazine could refer to "A namby-pamby Duke". The hyphenated phrase now covers anything ineffectual or affectedly sentimental. [4]

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN   0-19-860634-6
  2. Burt, Daniel S., The Chronology of American Literature: : America's literary achievements from the colonial era to modern times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004, ISBN   978-0-618-16821-7, retrieved via Google Books
  3. 1 2 Exact name according to library catalog web page Archived 2016-10-26 at the Wayback Machine of East Carolina University's Joyner Library website, retrieved July 2, 2009
  4. 1 2 3 Web page titled "Namby-pamby", at The Phrase Finder website, retrieved July 2, 2009. Archived 2009-07-20.
  5. 1 2 Web page titled "namby pamby", at the World Wide Words website, retrieved July 2, 2009. Archived 2009-07-20.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambrose Philips</span> 17th/18th-century English poet and politician

Ambrose Philips was an English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of his time, resulting in Henry Carey bestowing the nickname "Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean affected, weak, and maudlin speech or verse.

In Latin literature, Augustan poetry is the poetry that flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus as Emperor of Rome, most notably including the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. In English literature, Augustan poetry is a branch of Augustan literature, and refers to the poetry of the 18th century, specifically the first half of the century. The term comes most originally from a term that George I had used for himself. He saw himself as an Augustus. Therefore, the British poets picked up that term as a way of referring to their endeavours, for it fit in another respect: 18th-century English poetry was political, satirical, and marked by the central philosophical problem of whether the individual or society took precedence as the subject of the verse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Carey (writer)</span> English poet, dramatist and songwriter

Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and composer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death. Because he worked in anonymity, selling his own compositions to others to pass off as their own, contemporary scholarship can only be certain of some of his poetry, and a great deal of the music he composed was written for theatrical incidental music. However, under his own name and hand, he was a prolific songwriter and balladeer, and he wrote the lyrics for almost all of these songs. Further, he wrote numerous operas and plays. His life is illustrative of the professional author in the early 18th century. Without inheritance or title or governmental position, he wrote for all of the remunerative venues, and yet he also kept his own political point of view and was able to score significant points against the ministry of the day. Further, he was one of the leading lights of the new "Patriotic" movement in drama.

Namby-pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse. It originates from Namby Pamby (1725) by Henry Carey.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1738 in poetry</span> Overview of the events of 1738 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.