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Topographical poetry or loco-descriptive poetry is a genre of poetry that describes, and often praises, a landscape or place. John Denham's 1642 poem "Cooper's Hill" established the genre, which peaked in popularity in 18th-century England. Examples of topographical verse date, however, to the late classical period, and can be found throughout the medieval era and during the Renaissance. Though the earliest examples come mostly from continental Europe, the topographical poetry in the tradition originating with Denham concerns itself with the classics, and many of the various types of topographical verse, such as river, ruin, or hilltop poems were established by the early 17th century.〔Aubin, Robert Arnold. ''Topographical Poetry in XVIII-Century England''. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1936, p. 3.〕 Alexander Pope's "Windsor Forest" (1713) and John Dyer's "Grongar Hill' (1762) are two other oft-mentioned examples. More recently, Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar Gipsy" (1853) praises the Oxfordshire countryside, and W. H. Auden's "In Praise of Limestone" (1948) uses a limestone landscape as an allegory. Subgenres of topographical poetry include the country house poem, written in 17th-century England to compliment a wealthy patron, and the prospect poem, describing the view from a distance or a temporal view into the future, with the sense of opportunity or expectation. When understood broadly as landscape poetry and when assessed from its establishment to the present, topographical poetry can take on many formal situations and types of places. Kenneth Baker identifies 37 varieties and compiles poems from the 16th through the 20th centuries—from Edmund Spenser to Sylvia Plath—correspondent to each type, from "Walks and Surveys," to "Mountains, Hills, and the View from Above," to "Violation of Nature and the Landscape," to "Spirits and Ghosts."〔Baker, Kenneth, ed. ''The Faber Book of Landscape Poetry.'' New York: Faber and Faber, 2000.〕 Common aesthetic registers of which topographical poetry make use include pastoral imagery, the sublime, and the picturesque. These latter two registers subsume imagery of rivers, ruins, moonlight, birdsong, and clouds, peasants, mountains, caves, and waterscapes. ==Political and social themes== Though predicated on the description of a landscape or piece of scenery, topographical poetry often, at least implicitly, addresses a political issue or the meaning of nationality in some way. The description of the landscape thus becomes a poetic vehicle through which a political message is delivered. For example, in John Denham's "Cooper's Hill," the speaker discusses the merits of the recently executed Charles I: :Here should my wonder dwell, & here my praise, :But my fixt thoughts my wandring eye betrays, :Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late :A Chappel crown'd, till in the Common Fate, :The adjoyning Abby fell: (may no such storm :Fall on our times, where ruine must reform.) :Tell me (my Muse) what monstrous dire offence, :What crime could any Christian King incense :To such a rage? (ll. 111-119) The chapel and abbey in ruin on top of a nearby hill, referenced spontaneously such that the speaker appears to articulate what the landscape first speaks to him, leads to the contemplation on the righteousness of Charles I and monarchy in general. Later, Alexander Pope infused pastoral with political in "Windsor Forest." He contrasts pastoral language, the "green Retreats" of pre-Norman England, with the "gloomy Waste" of post-Conquest England suffering the "Despotick Reign" of rulers like King William I. The combination of political argument and pastoral language underscores the Tory allegory of Windsor Forest.〔Santesso, Aaron. "The Conscious Swain: Political Pastoral in Pope's Epic." ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' 37.2, Winter 2004, pp. 253-271.〕 James Thomson's long poem ''The Seasons'' (1726–30) appeals to a class-specific social ideology by placing the landed gentry's authority on a level with the order of nature. The fierce snowstorm in "Winter", for example, is awe-inspiring but only dangerous for the generalized rustic shepherd struggling through it rather than reading about it, and the sympathy engendered through the former only serves to reaffirm the sensibility and political righteousness of the gentry. Thus, the importance and inevitability of submitting to the authority of nature is connected to the importance of maintaining social order, which the landed classes can do from their relatively safe position in the schema of the poem. In later editions of ''The Seasons'', Thomson becomes increasingly explicit about his political message, using the language of the sublime in nature to flatter Whig politicians, a move based in the dedication or compliment to a patron common to topographical poetry in the early 18th century.〔Fulford, Tim. ''Landscape, LIberty, and Authority: Poetry, Criticism, and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 18-38〕 The prospect-view was central in the early 18th century to the landed estates' relationship with poetry. It suggested that the natural scene corresponded with political dominance, and the presentation of a disinterested but shared value, a non-threatening aesthetic one, socially legitimized this dominance.〔Fulford, Tim. ''Landscape, LIberty, and Authority: Poetry, Criticism, and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 3.〕 Yet for this same implicit social and political message and the way it was connected to nature, landscape poetry became a vehicle for William Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the later romantics to offer new ways of understanding the landscape's relationship with poetry and politics. Indeed, Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" marks a change in the course of the genre. Increasingly, the landscape and the issues implicit in it once registered by the poet's external sight become internalized and subject to inward contemplation of the poet's soul. :Until, the breath of this corporeal frame :And even the motion of our human blood :Almost suspended, we are laid asleep :In body, and become a living soul: :While with any eye made quiet by the power :Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, :We see into the life of things. (ll 44-48) Charlotte Turner Smith's "Beachy Head" is an example of a topographical poem that constantly shifts from the external views inspiring national pride and the internal views to which they give way, bringing thoughts on slavery, identity, differing voices. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Topographical poetry」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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