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The Wildness Pleases (Routledge Revivals): The Origins of Romanticism
by Christopher ThackerFirst published in 1983. This book charts the growth of Romanticism from the initial reactions to the authoritarian classicism of Louis XIV, through the ‘codification’ of the Sublime by Burke in the 1750s, to the fascination with mystery, fear and violence which dominated the writing of the late eighteenth century. The origins of the movement are found in the writings of Rousseau and admiration for the ‘noble savage’, the development of the landscape garden, discoveries in the South Seas, new approaches to ‘primitive’ poetry and enthusiasm for gothic art and literature. These attitudes are contrasted with the more classical views of writers like Samuel Johnson.
The Wildness Pleases (Routledge Revivals): The Origins of Romanticism
by Christopher ThackerFirst published in 1983. This book charts the growth of Romanticism from the initial reactions to the authoritarian classicism of Louis XIV, through the ‘codification’ of the Sublime by Burke in the 1750s, to the fascination with mystery, fear and violence which dominated the writing of the late eighteenth century. The origins of the movement are found in the writings of Rousseau and admiration for the ‘noble savage’, the development of the landscape garden, discoveries in the South Seas, new approaches to ‘primitive’ poetry and enthusiasm for gothic art and literature. These attitudes are contrasted with the more classical views of writers like Samuel Johnson.
Christina Rossetti - Selected Poems
by Christina Georgina Rossetti C. H. SissonChristina Rossetti was in a sense the first poet of the Pre-Raphelites, her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) having been - as if by accident - the writing from that group which first caught public attention. It contains many of her best poems. Later work - devotional poems, love lyrics and descriptive pieces - extended the themes and forms of her first remarkable collection. It is remarkable, but in a quiet and intense way, not in the manner of those who seem to have learned from her among her contemporaries. Ford Madox Ford, who had a subtle ear for the unemphatic excellence of the nineteenth-century writers, called her 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced'. Her modern admirers are many, especially among the poets. Philip Larkin speaks of her poetry as 'unequalled for its objective expression of happiness denied and a certain unfamiliar steely stoicism'. In this selection C.H. Sisson presents a wide range of her work and in his biographical and critical introduction suggests fresh perspectives on it. Sisson also includes here Rossetti's long-unavailable 'Maude, A Story for Girls', which was written when she was very young and gives some indication of her cast of mind and her skills as a writer of prose fiction. The character of Maude is a severe self-portrait, wry at her own expense. As Sisson says, 'with any poet the starting-point, social as well as literary, is worth finding out about'.
Christina Rossetti - Selected Poems (G - Reference,information And Interdisciplinary Subjects Ser.)
by Christina Georgina Rossetti C. H. SissonChristina Rossetti was in a sense the first poet of the Pre-Raphelites, her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) having been - as if by accident - the writing from that group which first caught public attention. It contains many of her best poems. Later work - devotional poems, love lyrics and descriptive pieces - extended the themes and forms of her first remarkable collection. It is remarkable, but in a quiet and intense way, not in the manner of those who seem to have learned from her among her contemporaries. Ford Madox Ford, who had a subtle ear for the unemphatic excellence of the nineteenth-century writers, called her 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced'. Her modern admirers are many, especially among the poets. Philip Larkin speaks of her poetry as 'unequalled for its objective expression of happiness denied and a certain unfamiliar steely stoicism'. In this selection C.H. Sisson presents a wide range of her work and in his biographical and critical introduction suggests fresh perspectives on it. Sisson also includes here Rossetti's long-unavailable 'Maude, A Story for Girls', which was written when she was very young and gives some indication of her cast of mind and her skills as a writer of prose fiction. The character of Maude is a severe self-portrait, wry at her own expense. As Sisson says, 'with any poet the starting-point, social as well as literary, is worth finding out about'.
Collected Prose (Poets On Poetry)
by Robert Hayden"A collection of essays on poetry and the experiences that influenced poet Robert Hayden. Contents include "The History of Punchinello: A Baroque Play in One Act," Hayden's introductory remarks to volumes like Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poet and The New Negro, and interviews with Hayden."
The Eclogues: Done Into English Prose (classic Reprint)
by VirgilHaunting and enigmatic, Virgil's Eclogues combined a Greek literary form with scenes from contemporary Roman life to create a work that inspired a whole European tradition of pastoral poetry. For despite their rustic setting and the beauty of their phrasing, the poems in Virgil's first collection are also grounded in reality. Shepherds are overwhelmed by the torments of poetic love - but they must also endure such real-life events as the tragic consequences of Julius Caesar's murder in 44 bc and a civil war. In giving unforgettable expression to the disasters of the day through poetry, the Eclogues paved the way for the Georgics and the Aeneid, the two greatest works of Latin literature, and are also a major masterpiece in their own right.
Inferno: The Divine Comedy I (Divine Comedy Ser. #Vol. 1)
by Dante Robin KirkpatrickDescribing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.
The Letters of William Cullen Bryant: Volume IV, 1858–1864
by William Cullen BryantThe years just before and during the Civil War marked the high point of Bryant's influence on public affairs, which had grown steadily since the Evening Post had upheld the democratic Jacksonian revolution of the 1830s. A founder of the Free Soil Party in 1848 and the Republican Party in 1856, Bryant was lauded in 1857 by Virginia anti-slavery leader John Curtis Underwood, who wrote to Eli Thayer, "What a glory it would be to our country if it could elect this man to the Presidency-the country not he would be honored & elevated by such an event."In 1860 Bryant helped secure the Presidential nomination for Abraham Lincoln, and was instrumental in the choice of two key members of his cabinet, Salmon Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, and Gideon Welles as Secretary of the Navy. During disheartening delays and defeats in the early war years, direct communications from Union field commanders empowered his editorial admonitions to such a degree that the conductor of a national magazine concluded that the Evening Post's "clear and able political leaders have been of more service to the government of this war than some of its armies."Bryant's correspondence with statesmen further reflects the immediacy of his concern with military and political decisions. There are thirty-five known letters to Lincoln, and thirty-two to Chase, Welles, war secretary Stanton, and Senators Fessenden, Morgan, and Sumner.This seven-year passage in Bryant's life, beginning with his wife's critical illness at Naples in 1858, concludes with a unique testimonial for his seventieth birthday in November 1864. The country's leading artists and writers entertained him at a "Festival" in New York's Century Club, giving him a portfolio of pictures by forty-six painters as a token of the "sympathy" he had "ever manifested toward the Artists," and the "high rank" he had "ever accorded to art." Poets Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier saluted him in prose and verse. Emerson saw him as "a true painter of the face of this country"; Holmes, as the "first sweet singer in the cage of our close-woven life." To Whittier, his personal and public life sounded "his noblest strain." And in the darkest hours of the war, said Lowell, he had "remanned ourselves in his own manhood's store," had become "himself our bravest crown."
The Making of the Reader: Language and Subjectivity in Modern American, English and Irish Poetry (Language, Discourse, Society Ser.)
by David Trotter
Midsummer
by Derek WalcottMost of the poems in this sequence of fifty where written in close succession during one summer in Trinidad. Their principle themes are the relationship of poetry to painting, the stasis of midsummer in the tropics, and the pull of the sea, family and friendship. Walcott records the experience of middle life - in reality and in memory or the imagination. On the publication of Derek Walcott's previous collection, The Fortunate Traveller, Blake Morrison wrote in the London Review of Books: 'The Forunate Traveller is an impressive collection that moves lucidly and at times brilliantly between abstract notions of power and responsibility and visual notions of landscape, cityscape and sea.' Midsummer is equally impressive.
New Selected Poems: New And Selected Poems (Chatto Poetry Ser.)
by Frederick SeidelThis collection provides readers with a perpetually exciting, compact edition of the revolutionary poet's most powerful work. Frederick Seidel has been hailed as 'the poet of a new contemporary form' (New York Review of Books), and 'the most frightening American poet ever' (Boston Review). His ambitious, disturbing and tender work has mystified and captured critics, poets and readers for decades. Select Seidel allows readers to appreciate the scope of Seidel's work over the past half-century and his uncanny ability to say the unsayable. Seidel is, in the words of the critic Adam Kirsch, 'the best American poet writing today'.
The Odyssey: Translated by Robert Fitzgerald
by Homer Robert FitzgeraldPenelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world.
Please Mrs Butler: Verses (Puffin Modern Classics Ser.)
by Allan AhlbergHappy 30th birthday, Please Mrs Butler!This witty collection of school poems by Allan Ahlberg, re-jacketed for its 30th anniversary and for a whole new generation of school children to fall in love with, is full of typical classroom events that will be recognized and enjoyed by everyone. From never-ending projects, reading tests, quarreling, making-up, excuses and 'Please, Sir, it isn't fair.' Fritz Wegner's line drawings beautifully complement the hilarious and poignant verses.Please Mrs Butler was voted the most important twentieth-century children's poetry book in a Books for Keeps poll.
