The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition

An Aeolian harp is a stringed instrument, likely invented in the 17th century, that makes music when the wind blows through it. Romantic poets like Coleridge and Shelley reference it widely in both poems and criticism as the metaphorical representation of the poet’s creative process. Nature produces the music through the man-made instrument, just as poetry is created by the human mind from the experience of nature.

Aesthetics is the philosophical study of what art is and what is fundamentally important about art in human though an experience. Abrams references aesthetics throughout his book, which broadens a discussion of poetry and literary analysis to coincide with philosophy. As his early summary of aesthetic thought from Plato through the 20th century shows, literary criticism has long been directly associated with discussions of art beyond poetry and fiction.

The artist is the person who creates the art, and one of Abrams’s four art co-ordinates. Abrams’s discussion of the artist draws on historical movements in literary theory and aesthetics that focus on the artist as the source of an art work’s importance and human value. The Expressive theories look first at the artist to explore how a work of art reflects humanity.