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There are certainly a dozen poets of this century whose work will be taken off the shelves or accessed on the flickering screens of the twenty-third century. It's almost clear who those poets will be. But as soon as one tries to give them context, that context consists of other poets who have no claims on our attention...
Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets (1998)
Traditionally disparaged as a woeful or ludicrous figure, the 'minor' author -- and especially the minor poet -- is a very necessary component in our constructions of literary history. The ranks of the minor constitute a putative mass of mediocrity from which Milton can surge or Keats can fly. Instances of minor authorship, and even minor generations, allow us to imagine a generalised period of inertia between the 'major' disruptions of established genres. The various distinctive ingredients of minor status, discourses of weakness, failure, neglect, self-destruction or slavish imitation and belatedness, all contribute to significant myth-formation in the maintenance of a canonical elect. I find the phenonena of critical condescension and apology very interesting, and I also have research interests in non-canonical poets such as Beddoes and Landor quite distinct from issues of deficient fame and reputation.
This page, presently under construction, will contain details of my current research into the work, canonical status and 'myths' of 'minor' poets of the Romantic and post-Romantic nineteenth century. A general discussion of constructions of minor status will be followed by a series of case studies, including Darley, Hood, Landon and Praed.
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