We should certainly distinguish two types of poets, the ob-
jective and the subjective: those who, like Keats and T. S. Eliot,
stress the poet's "negative capability," his openness to the world,
the obliteration of his concrete personality, and the opposite type
of the poet, who aims at displaying his personality, wants to
draw a self-portrait, to confess, to express himself. 6 For long
stretches of history we know only the first type: the works in
which the element of personal expression is very weak, even
though the aesthetic value may be great. The Italian novelle,
chivalric romances, the sonnets of the Renaissance, Elizabethan
drama, naturalistic novels, most folk poetry, may serve as lit-
erary examples.