Poetry

Abstract

Poetry is a rich source for the history of emotions. Nevertheless, it is not a straightforward documentary source. Realism did not become the dominant form of literary representation until the nineteenth century. Rather, emotion in poetry can have both a symbolic and a literal meaning. Romantic love is by far the most pervasive emotion in early modem poetry, but friendship, grief, patriotism, religious wonder and stoic discipline are recurrent themes bound by conventions of genre, language and affect derived and adapted from classical poetry.