Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas, the exact philosophical meaning of which is perhaps one of the most disputed questions in higher academic philosophy. At least one may say, with some degree of certitude, that Plato held the realm of ideas to be absolute reality. As for the exact relationship between the ideal and non-ideal world, the platonic corpus is silent, insofar as interpretation must rely upon literary device, metaphor, and amphibology. Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction. In other words, we are urged to believe that Plato's theory of ideas is an abstraction, divorced from the so-called external world, of modern European philosophy, despite the fact Plato taught that ideas are ultimately real, and different from non-ideal things--indeed, he argued for a distinction between the ideal and non-ideal realm.
Plato gives the divided line as an outline of this theory. At the top of the line, the Form of the Good is found, directing everything underneath.
Platonism is an ancient school of philosophy, founded by Plato; at the beginning, this school had a physical existence at a site just outside the walls of Athens called the Academy, as well as the intellectual unity of a shared approach to philosophizing.
Platonism is usually divided into three periods:
Early Platonism
Middle Platonism
Neo-Platonism
Neoclassical poetry was quite prevalent in the 18th to 19th centuries of colonial America.
Romanticism largely began as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day. Inevitably, the characterization of a broad range of contemporaneous poets and poetry under the single unifying name can be viewed more as an exercise in historical compartmentalization than an actual attempt to capture the essence of the actual ‘movement’. Indeed, the term “Romanticism” did not arise until the Victorian period. Nonetheless, poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing classical forms and language in an effort to use ‘real’ language. Romantic poetry referred to the natural aspects of the world, focusing on the feelings of sadness and great loss/grief.
This term is used to describe the work of some late 17th century and 18th century poets such as Alexander Pope and John Dryden who deliberately imitated the classical Greek and Roman poets. Their work was characterized by formality and restraint. Romanticism was a reaction against neo-classicism. The neo-classical poets are sometimes known as the Augustans.