“Past ruin’d Ilion”: The Classical Ideal and the Romantic Voice in Landor’s Poetry
This article argues that throughout his long career, Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) looked back to the classical past as both the source and the fullest embodiment of his literary ideal. It contends that besides the stylistic classicism often attributed to him, Landor brought the values of the classical and the Romantic into tension, engagement, and alignment with each other. In order to examine the interplay between these complementary visions of life, the article traces how Landor makes use of references and allusions to the classical past within his shorter lyric poems. As a case in point, it examines the group of poems written to and about his beloved Ianthe, analyzing the means—ranging from extended conceits to brief allusions and offhand or submerged references—by which Landor brought together the Romantic expression of personal experience with the universality, authority, and permanence that he associated with Greek and Latin literature.