The neoclassic tendency to write about the ruins of Rome was both an attempt to recapture the grandeur of the "golden age" of man as well as a lament for the passing of a great civilization. John Dyer, who wrote The Ruins of Rome in 1740, was largely responsible for the eighteenth-century revival of a unique sub-genre of landscape poetry dealing with ruins of the ancient world. Few poems about the ruins had been written since Antiquités de Rome in 1558 by Joachim Du Bellay. Dyer was one of f..
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-168) and index
