A critical edition of the odes of Mark Akenside, M.D

Peters, Helen (1972) A critical edition of the odes of Mark Akenside, M.D. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis presents a critical edition of the Odes of Mark Akenside based on the official posthumous edition of his collected poetic works, as edited by his friend Jeremiah Dyson in 1772. Two odes, not included in Dyson’s edition, one in The Gentleman ‘s Magazine (1739) the other in John Garnett’s New Brunswick edition of Akenside’s works (1808), have been attributed to the poet by several of his biographers and are included in the present text. Of the odes published by Dyson, roughly half are presented in their final-revised forms but had been published previously in earlier versions. This edition, therefore, also presents in the textual apparatus the earlier substantive authorial variants of these odes in a manner designed to allow reconstruction of the earlier versions. -- The Introduction discusses Akenside ‘s use of the ode form, particularly his attempt to imitate classical models in Neo-classic idiom and conventions. In the discussion, the recent tradition of Akenside criticism, based largely on “The Pleasures of Imagination” and the poet’s alleged pre-Romantic tendencies, is dismissed as having little bearing on the Odes, for the study of these poems reveals him as a practitioner of an established tradition rather than as an innovator of a new form of poetry. -- The second part of the Introduction discusses the nature of his revisions, some of which show his struggle to compose English odes based on classical models in accordance with the diction and decorum of the Augustans; others are of a kind common to all poets who habitually reworked their poems. Revision is widespread in a surprisingly large number of authors, and, as such information is of importance in the study of literary works, this thesis has as one of its principal concerns the devising of editorial procedures to reflect the complexity of the textual evidence in one revising poet.

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