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Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art
by Willard SpiegelmanSpiegelman examines the theme of indolence-- both positive and negative--as it appears in the canonical work of four Romantic poets. He argues for a renewal of interest in literary formalism, aesthetics, and the pastoral genre. Wordsworth's "wise passiveness," Coleridge's "dejection" and torpor, Shelley's pastoral dolce far niente, and Keats's "delicious...indolence" are seen as individual manifestations of a common theme. Spiegelman argues that the trope of indolence originated in the religious, philosophical, psychological, and economic discourses from the middle ages to the late eighteenth century. In particular, the years surrounding the French revolution are marked by the rich variety of experiments conducted by these poets on this topic. Countering recent politically/ideologically motivated literary theory, Spiegelman looks, instead, at how the poems work. He argues for aesthetic appreciation and critique, which, he feels, the Romantic pastoral begs for in its celebration of nature and the sublime. The book concludes with Spiegelman following the Romantic legacy and its transformation into America (in the form of Whitman), and, further, into the twentieth century (in Frost's poems).
The Poetics Of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Paul De Man
by Paul MorrisonMorrison examines the legacy of the modernist poetics of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, as it relates to current theoretical orthodoxies, and traces its influence on the current crisis in post-structural literary theory. Morrison reads the politics of post-structural theory in relation to the socio-cultural arguments espoused in the poetry and prose by Pound and Eliot, and reveals a continuity between that theory and high modernism's tendency towards fascism. Without reducing the political implications of poetry to mere caricature and without slighting the force and fact of literary mediation, Morrison has produced a book that will reshape the discussion of the social dimension of modernism. He concludes with a provocative analysis of deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man, and makes a case for a new post-structural theory that can accommodate history.
Elizabeth Bishop: The Restraints Of Language
by C. K. DoreskiThis illuminating study examines Elizabeth Bishop's rhetorical strategies and the way they shape the formal and thematic movements of her poetry and stories. Unlike other recent studies of Bishop, Doreski's does not concern itself primarily with her visual imagery, but rather deals with her poetry as a series of linguistic strategies designed to create the maximum illusion of representation while resisting the romantic devices of self-revelation and solipsistic narration. Doreski argues that Bishop takes advantage of the inadequacies of language, and with a postmodern sense of limitation explores the gaps and silences narrative must bridge with the mundane, the patently inadequate, leaving an air of emotional intimacy without committing itself to the banality of full exposure. This study finds the poems and stories mutually illuminating, but while moving back and forth among her various works, acknowledges the intelligent ordering of the volumes Bishop published in her lifetime.
Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius
by Jack StillingerThis is a study of the collaborative creation behind literary works that are usually considered to be written by a single author. Although most theories of interpretation and editing depend on a concept of single authorship, many works are actually developed by more than one author. Stillinger examines case histories from Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mill, and T.S. Eliot, as well as from American fiction, plays, and films, demonstrating that multiple authorship is a widespread phenomenon. He shows that the reality of how an author produces a work is often more complex than is expressed in the romantic notion of the author as solitary genius. The cumulative evidence revealed in this engaging study indicates that collaboration deserves to be included in any account of authorial achievement.
Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism
by James LongenbachAlthough readers of modern literature have always known about the collaboration of W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, the crucial winters these poets spent living together in Stone Cottage in Sussex (1913-1916) have remained a mystery. Working from a large base of previously unpublished material, James Longenbach presents for the first time the untold story of these three winters. Inside the secret world of Stone Cottage, Pound's Imagist poems were inextricably linked to Yeats's studies in spiritualism and magic, and early drafts of The Cantos reveal that the poem began in response to the same esoteric texts that shaped Yeats's visionary system. At the same time, Yeats's autobiographies and Noh-style plays took shape with Pound's assistance. Having retreated to Sussex to escape the flurry of wartime London, both poets tracked the progress of the Great War and in response wrote poems--some unpublished until now--that directly address the poet's political function. More than the story of a literary friendship, Stone Cottage explores the Pound-Yeats connection within the larger context of modern literature and culture, illuminating work that ranks with the greatest achievements of modernism.
The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet
by Paul OppenheimerThis revolutionary study presents new facts and an original theory about the origin of the thought and literature that may be considered "modern." Using fifty-one new translations of sonnets from four languages spanning seven centuries, Oppenheimer argues that "modern" thought and literature were born with the invention of the sonnet in 13th-century Italy. In revealing the sonnet as the first lyric form since the fall of the Roman Empire meant not for music or performance but for silent reading, the book demonstrates that the sonnet was the first modern literary form deliberately intended to portray the self in conflict and to explore self-consciousness. The wide-ranging essay of Part I traces the influences of the sonnet, as invented by Giacomo da Lentino, combining historical fact with the history of ideas and literary criticism. Part II illustrates, in bilingual format, the sonnet's growing appeal and variety during the centuries that followed with translations from Italian, German, French, and Spanish. The selection presents sonnets by more than thirty-five poets, among them Dante, Petrarch, Goethe, Rilke, Ronsard, Valéry, Ibarbourou, and Lorca. The concluding section discusses previous scholarship, offers proofs of the sonnet's introspective and silent inventions, and for the first time establishes the source of the form, in Platonic-Pythagorean mathematics.
English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism (Galaxy Books)
by M. H. AbramsThis highly acclaimed volume contains thirty essays by such leading literary critics as A.O. Lovejoy, Lionel Trilling, C.S. Lewis, F.R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Jonathan Wordsworth, and Jack Stillinger. Covering the major poems by each of the important Romantic poets, the contributors present many significant perspectives in modern criticism--old and new, discursive and explicative, mimetic and rhetorical, literal and mythical, archetypal and phenomenological, pro and con.
The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker
by Maryemma GrahamThis first biography of poet and writer Margaret Walker (1915-98) offers a comprehensive close reading of a pillar in American culture for a majority of the 20th century. Without defining herself as a radical or even a feminist, Walker followed the precepts of both. She promoted the idea of the artist of tradition and social change, a public intellectual and an institution builder. Among the first to recognize the impact of black women in literature, Walker became a chief architect of what many have called the new Black South Renaissance. Her art was influenced early by Langston Hughes, her political understanding of the world by Richard Wright. Walker expanded both into a comprehensive view on art and humanism, which became a national platform for the center she founded in Mississippi that now bears her name. The House Where My Soul Lives provides a full account of Walker's life and new interpretations of her writings before and after the publication of her most well-known poem in the 1930s in Chicago. The book rejects the widely held view of Walker as the "angry black woman" and emphasizes what contemporary American culture owes to her decades of foundational work in what we know today as Black Studies, Women's Studies, and the Public Humanities. She was fierce in her claim to be "black, female and free" which gave her the authority to challenge all hierarchies, no matter at what cost. Featuring 80 archival photos and documents and based on never before examined personal papers and interviews with those who knew Walker personally, this book is required reading for all readers of biographies of American writers.
Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism
by Wendy Raphael RobertsIn 1740, Benjamin Franklin published the first American edition of Gospel Sonnets, by the eminent Scottish Presbyterian minister Ralph Erskine. The work, already in its fifth British edition, quickly became an American bestseller and remained so throughout the eighteenth century. Franklin was aware of what most scholars of American religion and literature have forgotten -that poetry played a central role in the "surprising works of God" that birthed evangelicalism. The far-reaching social transformations precipitated by the transatlantic evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century depended upon the development of a major literary form, that of revival poetry. Literary scholars and historians of religion have prioritized sermons, conversion narratives, periodicals, and hymnody. Wendy Roberts here argues that poetry offered a unique capacity to "diffuse celestial Fervor through the World," in the words of the cleric Samuel Davies. Awakening Verse is the first monograph to address this large corpus of evangelical poetry in the American colonies, shedding light on important dimensions of eighteenth-century religious and literary culture. Roberts deftly assembles a large, previously unknown archive of immensely popular poems, examines how literary history has rendered this poetic tradition invisible, and demonstrates how a vibrant popular poetics exercised a substantial effect on the landscape of early American religion, literature, and culture.
Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism
by Wendy Raphael RobertsIn 1740, Benjamin Franklin published the first American edition of Gospel Sonnets, by the eminent Scottish Presbyterian minister Ralph Erskine. The work, already in its fifth British edition, quickly became an American bestseller and remained so throughout the eighteenth century. Franklin was aware of what most scholars of American religion and literature have forgotten -that poetry played a central role in the "surprising works of God" that birthed evangelicalism. The far-reaching social transformations precipitated by the transatlantic evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century depended upon the development of a major literary form, that of revival poetry. Literary scholars and historians of religion have prioritized sermons, conversion narratives, periodicals, and hymnody. Wendy Roberts here argues that poetry offered a unique capacity to "diffuse celestial Fervor through the World," in the words of the cleric Samuel Davies. Awakening Verse is the first monograph to address this large corpus of evangelical poetry in the American colonies, shedding light on important dimensions of eighteenth-century religious and literary culture. Roberts deftly assembles a large, previously unknown archive of immensely popular poems, examines how literary history has rendered this poetic tradition invisible, and demonstrates how a vibrant popular poetics exercised a substantial effect on the landscape of early American religion, literature, and culture.
Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales
by Jason S. NethercutConsensus holds that Lucretius admired the literary prestige of Homeric epos, the form that Ennius famously introduced to Latin literature. However, some hold that Lucretius disagreed with Ennius' quasi-Pythagorean claim to be Homer reborn, and so uniquely qualified to adapt Homeric poetry to the Latin language. Likewise, received wisdom holds that Lucretius followed in the path of poets writing in the wake of Ennius' Annales, most of whom employed an Ennian style. However, throughout the De Rerum Natura, Lucretius' use of Ennius' Annales as a formal model for a long discursive poem in epic meter was neither inevitable nor predictable, on the one hand, nor meaningful in the simple way that critical consensus has always maintained. Jason Nethercut posits that Lucretius selected Ennius as a model precisely to dismantle the values for which he claimed Ennius stood, including the importance of history as a poetic subject and Rome's historical achievement in particular. As the first book to offer substantial analysis of the relationship between two of the ancient world's most impactful poets, Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales fills an important gap not only in Lucretian scholarship, but also in our understanding of Latin literary history.
Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales
by Jason S. NethercutConsensus holds that Lucretius admired the literary prestige of Homeric epos, the form that Ennius famously introduced to Latin literature. However, some hold that Lucretius disagreed with Ennius' quasi-Pythagorean claim to be Homer reborn, and so uniquely qualified to adapt Homeric poetry to the Latin language. Likewise, received wisdom holds that Lucretius followed in the path of poets writing in the wake of Ennius' Annales, most of whom employed an Ennian style. However, throughout the De Rerum Natura, Lucretius' use of Ennius' Annales as a formal model for a long discursive poem in epic meter was neither inevitable nor predictable, on the one hand, nor meaningful in the simple way that critical consensus has always maintained. Jason Nethercut posits that Lucretius selected Ennius as a model precisely to dismantle the values for which he claimed Ennius stood, including the importance of history as a poetic subject and Rome's historical achievement in particular. As the first book to offer substantial analysis of the relationship between two of the ancient world's most impactful poets, Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales fills an important gap not only in Lucretian scholarship, but also in our understanding of Latin literary history.
Atomism in the Aeneid: Physics, Politics, and Cosmological Disorder
by Matthew M. GoreyScholars have long recognized Lucretius's De Rerum Natura as an important allusive source for the Aeneid, but significant disagreement persists regarding the scope and purpose of Virgil's engagement with Epicurean philosophy. In Atomism in the Aeneid, Matthew M. Gorey investigates that engagement and argues that atomic imagery functions as a metaphor for cosmic and political disorder in Virgil's epic, associating the enemies of Aeneas and of Rome's imperial destiny with the haphazard, purposeless chaos of Epicurean atoms in the void. While nearly all of Virgil's allusions to atomism are constructed from Lucretian intertextual material, Gorey shows how the poet's negative reception of atomism draws upon a long and popular tradition of anti-atomist discourse in Greek philosophy that metaphorically likened the non-teleological cosmology of atomism to civic disorder and mob rule. By situating Virgil's atomic allusions within the tradition of philosophical opposition to Epicurean physics, Atomism in the Aeneid illustrates the deeply ideological nature of his engagement with Lucretius.
Atomism in the Aeneid: Physics, Politics, and Cosmological Disorder
by Matthew M. GoreyScholars have long recognized Lucretius's De Rerum Natura as an important allusive source for the Aeneid, but significant disagreement persists regarding the scope and purpose of Virgil's engagement with Epicurean philosophy. In Atomism in the Aeneid, Matthew M. Gorey investigates that engagement and argues that atomic imagery functions as a metaphor for cosmic and political disorder in Virgil's epic, associating the enemies of Aeneas and of Rome's imperial destiny with the haphazard, purposeless chaos of Epicurean atoms in the void. While nearly all of Virgil's allusions to atomism are constructed from Lucretian intertextual material, Gorey shows how the poet's negative reception of atomism draws upon a long and popular tradition of anti-atomist discourse in Greek philosophy that metaphorically likened the non-teleological cosmology of atomism to civic disorder and mob rule. By situating Virgil's atomic allusions within the tradition of philosophical opposition to Epicurean physics, Atomism in the Aeneid illustrates the deeply ideological nature of his engagement with Lucretius.
Reading Roman Pride (Emotions of the Past)
by Yelena BarazPride is pervasive in Roman texts, as an emotion and a political and social concept implicated in ideas of power. This study examines Roman discourse of pride from two distinct complementary perspectives. The first is based on scripts, mini-stories told to illustrate what pride is, how it arises and develops, and where it fits within the Roman emotional landscape. The second is semantic, and draws attention to differences between terms within the pride field. The peculiar feature of Roman pride that emerges is that it appears exclusively as a negative emotion, attributed externally and condemned, up to the Augustan period. This previously unnoticed lack of expression of positive pride in republican discourse is a result of the way the Roman republican elite articulates its values as anti-monarchical and is committed, within the governing class, to power-sharing and a kind of equality. The book explores this uniquely Roman articulation of pride attributed to people, places, and institutions and traces the partial rehabilitation of pride that begins in the texts of the Augustan poets at the time of great political change. Reading for pride produces innovative readings of texts that range from Plautus to Ausonius, with major focus on Cicero, Livy, Vergil, and other Augustan poets.
Reading Roman Pride (Emotions of the Past)
by Yelena BarazPride is pervasive in Roman texts, as an emotion and a political and social concept implicated in ideas of power. This study examines Roman discourse of pride from two distinct complementary perspectives. The first is based on scripts, mini-stories told to illustrate what pride is, how it arises and develops, and where it fits within the Roman emotional landscape. The second is semantic, and draws attention to differences between terms within the pride field. The peculiar feature of Roman pride that emerges is that it appears exclusively as a negative emotion, attributed externally and condemned, up to the Augustan period. This previously unnoticed lack of expression of positive pride in republican discourse is a result of the way the Roman republican elite articulates its values as anti-monarchical and is committed, within the governing class, to power-sharing and a kind of equality. The book explores this uniquely Roman articulation of pride attributed to people, places, and institutions and traces the partial rehabilitation of pride that begins in the texts of the Augustan poets at the time of great political change. Reading for pride produces innovative readings of texts that range from Plautus to Ausonius, with major focus on Cicero, Livy, Vergil, and other Augustan poets.
Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus
by Christopher Athanasious FaraoneIn Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus, Christopher Faraone discusses a number of short hexametrical genres such as oracles, incantations and laments that do not easily fit the generic models provided by the extant poetry of Hesiod and Homer. In the process, he gives us new insight into their ritual performance, their early history, and how poets from Homer to Theocritus embedded or imitated these genres to enrich their own hexametrical poems--by playing with and sometimes overturning the generic expectations of their audiences or readers. Christopher Faraone combines literary and ritual studies to produce a rich and detailed picture of hexametrical genres performed publicly for gods, such as hymns or laments for Adonis, or other that were performed more privately, such as epithalamia, oracles, or incantations. This volume deals primarily with the recovery of lost or under-appreciated hexametrical genres, which are often left out of modern taxonomies of archaic hexametrical poetry, either because they survive only in fragments or because the earliest evidence for them dates to the classical period.
Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus
by Christopher Athanasious FaraoneIn Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus, Christopher Faraone discusses a number of short hexametrical genres such as oracles, incantations and laments that do not easily fit the generic models provided by the extant poetry of Hesiod and Homer. In the process, he gives us new insight into their ritual performance, their early history, and how poets from Homer to Theocritus embedded or imitated these genres to enrich their own hexametrical poems--by playing with and sometimes overturning the generic expectations of their audiences or readers. Christopher Faraone combines literary and ritual studies to produce a rich and detailed picture of hexametrical genres performed publicly for gods, such as hymns or laments for Adonis, or other that were performed more privately, such as epithalamia, oracles, or incantations. This volume deals primarily with the recovery of lost or under-appreciated hexametrical genres, which are often left out of modern taxonomies of archaic hexametrical poetry, either because they survive only in fragments or because the earliest evidence for them dates to the classical period.
The Cloud of Longing: A New Translation and Eco-Aesthetic Study of Kalidasa's Meghaduta
by E. H. JarowA full-length study and new translation of the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa's famed Meghaduta (literally "The Cloud Messenger,") The Cloud of Longing focuses on the poem's interfacing of nature, feeling, figuration, and mythic memory. This work is unique in its attention given to the natural world in light of the nexus of language and love that is the chief characteristic (lakshana) of the poem. Along with a scrupulous study of the approximately 111 verses of the poem, The Cloud of Longing offers an extended look at how nature was envisioned by classical India's supreme poet as he portrays a cloud's imagined voyage over the fields, valleys, rivers, mountains, and towns of classical India. This sustained, close reading of the Meghaduta will speak to contemporary readers as well as to those committed to developing a more in-depth experience of the natural world. The Cloud of Longing fills a gap in the translation of classical Indian texts, as well as in studies of world literature, religion, and into an emerging integrative environmental discipline.
The Cloud of Longing: A New Translation and Eco-Aesthetic Study of Kalidasa's Meghaduta
by E. H. JarowA full-length study and new translation of the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa's famed Meghaduta (literally "The Cloud Messenger,") The Cloud of Longing focuses on the poem's interfacing of nature, feeling, figuration, and mythic memory. This work is unique in its attention given to the natural world in light of the nexus of language and love that is the chief characteristic (lakshana) of the poem. Along with a scrupulous study of the approximately 111 verses of the poem, The Cloud of Longing offers an extended look at how nature was envisioned by classical India's supreme poet as he portrays a cloud's imagined voyage over the fields, valleys, rivers, mountains, and towns of classical India. This sustained, close reading of the Meghaduta will speak to contemporary readers as well as to those committed to developing a more in-depth experience of the natural world. The Cloud of Longing fills a gap in the translation of classical Indian texts, as well as in studies of world literature, religion, and into an emerging integrative environmental discipline.
Disorienting Empire: Republican Latin Poetry's Wanderers
by Basil DufalloDisorienting Empire is the first book to examine Republican Latin poetry's recurring interest in characters who become lost. Basil Dufallo explains the prevalence of this theme with reference to the rapid expansion of Rome's empire in the Middle and Late Republic. It was both a threatening and an enticing prospect, Dufallo argues, to imagine the ever-widening spaces of Roman power as a place where one could become disoriented, both in terms of geographical wandering and in a more abstract sense connected with identity and identification, especially as it concerned gender and sexuality. Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, and Catullus, as well as the "triumviral" Horace of Satires, book 1, all reveal an interest in such experiences, particularly in relation to journeys into the Greek world from which these writers drew their source material. Fragmentary authors such as Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius, as well as prose historians including Polybius and Livy, add depth and context to the discussion. Setting the Republican poets in dialogue with queer theory and postcolonial theory, Dufallo brings to light both anxieties latent in the theme and the exuberance it suggests over new creative possibilities opened up by reorienting oneself toward new horizons, new identifications-by discovering with pleasure that one could be other than one thought. Further, in showing that the Republican poets had been experimenting with such techniques for generations before the Augustan Age, Disorienting Empire offers its close readings as a means of interpreting afresh Aeneas' wandering journey in Vergil's Aeneid.