"Never by passion quite possessed" - A study of the expression of the conflict between 'passion' and 'reason' in the poetry of George Crabbe

Abstract

A study is made of the centrally important antithetical ideas of 'Passion' and 'Reason' in Crabbe's poetry. It is the conscious organization of these ideas that gives many of the tales an architectonic firmness. Furthermore, it is out of this basic conflict of 'Passion' and 'Reason', out of the tension that this conflict generates, that Crabbe creates narrative suspense, the sine qua non of story-telling. More so than any of Crabbe's perfunctory attempts at archictectonics on the larger scale, the pervasive theme of 'Passion' and 'Reason' gives a certain unity to each collection of tales and to the poetry as a whole. The non-couplet poetry is examined. Although as a body of work it is decidedly inferior in comparison with the couplet tales, it is seen as Crabbe's definite response to the 'Passion' in the new period of poetic writing; a writing that was to be characterized both by its expression of the poet's emotion and by its essential appeal to the emotion of the reader. Part of the non-couplet poetry, as indeed much of the material of the couplet tales, displays, in its prepossession with the expression of self, a further marked characteristic of the new poetic modes. A claim is substantiated that but for Crabbe's natural timidity on the one hand, and vocational, critical, and social pressures on the other, much material probably similar to that of non-couplet poetry might have been published, instead of being destroyed. The place of the sea as a vital and central part of Crabbe's poetical sensibility is studied. The sea in its literal-descriptive, emblematic, and metaphorical appearances in the poetry emerges as a 'correlative' of 'Passion'. The sea is intimately connected with this central idea, both as a nemesis for man's surrender to emotion, and as an 'emblem' of 'Passion' itself.