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James Arbuckle's Glotta (1721) and the Poetry of Allusion
Author(s) -
HOLMES RICHARD
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2011.00407.x
Subject(s) - poetry , windsor , humanism , allusion , enlightenment , context (archaeology) , literature , scottish enlightenment , history , art , classics , art history , philosophy , theology , archaeology , ecology , biology
James Arbuckle's Glotta (1721) is a topographical poem about the River Clyde, which also examines Scottish culture in post‐Union ‘Britain’. It is a conscious exercise in a tradition of allusive poetry, the allusions ranging from Pope's Windsor‐Forest and Denham's Cooper's Hill to a Scottish poetic tradition that includes the sixteenth‐century humanist George Buchanan and Arbuckle's contemporary (and friend) Allan Ramsay. Pope's Tory celebration of Stuart culture is married to the ‘ultra‐Whig’ Buchanan to celebrate the new Hanoverian ‘Britain’ as the source of Scottish ‘enlightenment’. This article explores these issues through a detailed analysis of Arbuckle's allusions and their historical context.