Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

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Book SynopsisThe aim of this volume is to give the general reader an introduction to the richest works of the great masters of Persian literature so that they can become better acquainted with this symbolic, mystical and sometimes? to the uninitiated? obscure literary world. Four discourses exploring the heart and soul of this rich and ancient literary tradition, have been collected here in a masterful translation by Leonard Lewisohn. The first, entitled ? Poetics and Aesthetics in the Persian Sufi Literary Tradition? , demonstrates the underlying structure of Persian literature and introduces the key concepts that will open the doors to understanding the main themes of Persian literature; the second, ? Of Scent and Sweetness: ? Attar and his Legacy in Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz? , leads the reader through the ? seven cities of love? so that they may taste the immortal nectar of this great mystic poet of Persia; in the third, ? The Principles of the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry? , the reader will enter the paradisal garden of Hafiz with its four rivers of paradise; and finally, the fourth centres on Rumi and his magic flute which tells tale after tale to enlighten the listener.

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Book SynopsisJackie Kay served as Scotland's Makar from 2016 to 2021 and is one of Scotland's foremost writers. Much of her work explores her own life and heritage, her upbringing and the cultural forces which shaped her. Many of her poems illuminate the stuff of everyday existence, and commemorate the love of family and friends with great tenderness and humour. Often, too, her writing explores the lives of others, giving marginalised and persecuted individuals a voice and bearing witness to the consequences of the worst in human nature.Lorna Borrowman Smith's Scotnote Study Guide examines issues of family and cultural identities in Jackie Kay's work. It covers a wide range of her poetry as well as her 2008 poetic drama The Lamplighter, and provides a comprehensive and stimulating guide for senior school pupils and teachers.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"These cantigas, in Zenith’s hands, remind me that a poetry’s message is its music."---Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's"Zenith helps provide a roadmap to appreciate some of the idiosyncratic aspects of the medieval language while also allowing himself the freedom to interpret the cantigas without a priority for overly literal translation. . . . Zenith’s phrasing conveys the love-sickness, anguish, jealousy, danger and fear that pulse through the original poems."---Jacob Abell, Reading in Translation"Delightful. . . . A bilingual volume that reveals an intriguing world of courtly love and satire in medieval Portugal and Spain." * Portuguese American Journal *"Zenith is to be congratulated for an authoritative, attractive and highly readable presentation of these songs to a twenty-first-century anglophone audience."---David Frier, Times Literary Supplement"This edition will bring this considerably large lyric corpus to the attention of a much wider circle of readers. It is a volume that deserves to be in the library of every medievalist."---Josiah Blackmore, Speculum

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Book SynopsisIn Spill poet, independent scholar, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs presents a commanding collection of poetry inspired by Black feminist literary critic Hortense Spillers depicting scenes of fugitive Black women and girls seeking freedom from gendered violence and racism.Trade Review"Gumbs’s writing has luscious urgency and rhythmic drive, which will make it of interest beyond its titular audience." -- Barbara Hoffert * Library Journal *"Spill is not just a poetic collection where art meets criticism or where art is criticism. Instead, it is an intricately woven, polyvocal, ever-expansive map that details and gives rise to new and old black feminisms instructing us how to live and move with(in) these proliferating epistemologies." -- Sasha Panaram * New Black Man (In Exile) *"Inspired by the work of black feminist intellectual Hortense Spillers, Gumbs’ collection of poems appear as a series of powerful scenarios. Reading the volume is akin to being a member of a theatre audience. The fourth wall is peeled away and one is suddenly witness to heartbreaking, inspiring and insightful scenes depicting fugitive black women and girls – unsung and celebrated 'sheroes' – seeking freedom from gendered violence and racism." -- Thomasi McDonald * News & Observer *"Spill is poetry that invites the reader to imagine these poems weren't written- they was lived, they were felt, and in some deep sense, re-membered. In other words, this book happened in somebody's body, a body committed to Black Feminist ways of knowing and feeling in the world.... By embracing and applying these through the form of the parable, Spill speaks to the radical, spiritual power that belongs to those 'black women who made and broke narrative.'" -- Lara Mimosa Montes * Poetry Project Review *"Gumbs’s poetry takes up the detritus of the everyday that surrounds theory — the affective social and political worlds in which black feminist theorists write — and bends it, splits it, like a prism breaking a beam of light into a rainbow." -- Maria Velazquez * Cascadia Subduction Zone *"Gumbs seamlessly moves between historic reference, inherited memories, and a series of visions or a journal of dreams-the result is bigger than text itself. Her writing blurs the lines between past, present, and future. The book communes with ancestral knowledge while offering conjectures of what could be, reminding us that Black women have always seen what comes next, past the edges of what seemed or seems possible.... Spill is first and foremost a love offering to all Black women, but all readers who bear witness will leave its pages knowing of radical imagined possibilities and the difficult path laid before us toward elsewhere: 'our work here is not done.'" -- Zaina Alsous * Bitch *"This book is a commanding collection of scenes depicting fugitive Black women and girls seeking freedom from gendered violence and racism. Like Audre Lorde, Gumbs writes for the complexity of her vision." -- Jaki Shelton Green * NBC News (NBCBlk) *"Blending my love of Black queer feminist authors with genre bending and analytically complex poetry, Gumbs’s work inflicted pleasantly unfamiliar feelings upon me that I cannot 'claim to have invented.' Spill transformed me from a reluctant bystander of theory and poetry into a willing and enthused participant…. Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Spill is an offering for all seeking an unpredictable and experimental journey of Black feminist artistic expression and self-discovery." -- Eden Sena Kokui Segbefia * Scalawag *"Gumbs not only speaks to the spiritual, bodily and otherworldly experience of black women, she allows readers to imagine new possibilities for poetry as a portal for understanding and deepening feminist theory." * Triangle Tribune *"This book is alive. The more I read it, the more gingerly I found myself handling its pages, despite the strength and determination of the women depicted within. . . . The scenes read as half song, half sermon (though intimately pitched), and taken as a whole create a richly textured chorus through which an exhilarating and deeply intelligent life force surges." -- Kim Adrian * The Rumpus *"[G]round-breaking. . . . Gumbs’s trilogy embraces the lyric beauty in the acts of naming, remembering, and finding one’s way back to the source. . . . Reading Gumbs’s books feels like reading an archive that will someday, who knows maybe even someday soon, usher in an era of radical transformation." -- Kathryn Nuernberger * West Branch *Table of ContentsA Note xi How She Knew 1 How She Spelled It 17 How She Left 31 How She Survived until Then 45 What She Did Not Say 61 What He Was Thinking 75 Where She Ended Up 91 The Witnesses the Wayward the Waiting 111 How We Know 125 The Way 141 Acknowledgments 151 Notes 153 Bibliography 161

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Book SynopsisConsidered the leading poet on the South Asian subcontinent, Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984), winner of the 1962 Lenin Peace Prize, was an outspoken opponent of the Pakistani government. This volume offers a selection of Faiz's poetry.

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Book SynopsisDesigned for students, teachers, scholars, poets, and readers with a general interest in poetics, this book presents an intellectual history of the theory of lyric reading that has circulated both within and beyond the classroom, wherever poetry is taught, read, discussed, and debated today.Trade ReviewThe thesis of The Lyric Theory Reader-that the very existence of the genre is more a critical extrapolation than anything solid and real-may seem to be itself a kind of critical conceit, but only because the argument serves the Reader exceptionally well as a cogent frame for taking stock of a diversity of approaches. Accordingly, the Reader would seem especially useful as a primer for up and coming scholars... Overall, the Reader should be considered essential in the formation of a thoughtful scholar of poetry and its criticism. -- Peter Fields Rocky Mountain ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments General Introduction Part I. How Does Lyric Become a Genre?Section 1. Genre TheorySection 2. Models of LyricPart I. Twentieth-Century Lyric ReadersSection 3. Anglo- American New Criticism Section 4. Structuralist Reading Section 5. Post- Structuralist ReadingSection 6. Frankfurt School and AfterSection 7. Phenomenologies of Lyric ReadingPart III. Lyric DeparturesSection 8. Avant- garde Anti-lyricism Section 9. Lyric and Sexual Difference Section 10. Comparative Lyric Contributors Source Acknowledgments Index of Authors and Works

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Book SynopsisA novel account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture, this book looks at American poetry and art of the last fifty years in light of the massive changes in people's working lives. Over the last few decades, we have seen the shift from an economy based on the production of goods to one based on the provision of services, the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce, and the emergence of new digital technologies that have transformed the way people work. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization argues that art and literature not only reflected the transformation of the workplace but anticipated and may have contributed to it as well, providing some of the terms through which resistance to labor was expressed. As firms continue to tout creativity and to reorganize in response to this resistance, they increasingly rely on models of labor that derive from values and ideas found in the experimental poetry and conceptual art of decades past.Trade Review"The originality of this study of postwar literature and capitalism lies not just in its focus on production as opposed to consumption, or on the effects that transformations of labor have had on what kind of art was made, by whom, and how. It lies also in its rigorous attention to the effects that aesthetic concepts have exerted on the transformation of labor, and to how art responds when wage labor is recast in explicitly aesthetic terms. Bernes's book goes beyond reflectionist arguments and elective affinities. Sobering and optimistic at once, it gives us new tools to think about the relation between art and labor, even as the two seem to be converging irreversibly." -- Sianne Ngai * Stanford University *"Far from wanting to tout any hoary theory of the artist-as-prophet, Bernes is working with a remarkably sophisticated and resilient new critical model which will doubtless have a lot of traction in the years ahead." -- Julian Murphet * Affirmations: Of the Modern *"Bernes poses the question of whether the quintessentially unproductive, workless realm of poetry may be instructive for what our precarious and workless capitalist future holds. The result is an intellectually rich, dynamic and lucidly written book...The theses Bernes puts forward concerning poetry's instrumentalization by capitalism will be of interest to all scholars of modern literature, not merely those interested in the postwar American poets and artists studied in detail here."––Benjamin Pickford, Literature & History"Developments in poetry and art, Bernes argues, also feed reciprocally into...transformations in the workplace, as 'aspects of the artistic critique, such as the critique of work from the standpoint of participation, became essential parts of the restructuring undertaken by capitalists to improve profitability'....[With] acute sensitivity to poetic form and [a] profound grasp of historical capitalism as filtered through their chosen sites of the gendered body and the workplace...Bernes [avoids] reductively optimistic or pessimistic claims about either poetry's total immunity or its total complicity." -- Walt Hunter * American Literary History *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts0Introduction chapter abstractAn overview of the argument of the book, the Introduction discusses postwar literature and art in light of the transformation of advanced capitalist economies, in particular the shift from the production of goods to the provision of services and the expansion of white-collar and in-person service work. Through an examination of some key examples, Bernes argues that the neo-avant-garde language of "participation," aiming to overcome the hierarchical relationship between writer and reader, artist and audience, anticipated and contributed to a shift in management theory toward new horizontal forms of corporate structure, undertaken in response to the widespread rebellion against the "anachronistic authoritarianism" of the postwar workplace. Bernes summarizes the main chapters of the book as well as its conclusions and finishes with a general discussion of periodization and historicization, elucidating his unique methodology in light of Marxist debates about historical causality. 1Lyric and the Service Sector: Frank O'Hara at Work chapter abstractO'Hara's "I do this, I do that" poems detail the poet's movements through the city during periods of leisure. In this chapter, Bernes argues that such leisure periods are usually, implicitly or explicitly, circumscribed by periods of work. This is especially true in Lunch Poems, where the conceit of the book is that many of the poems were written during his "lunch hour." O'Hara's lunch-hour pastorals are not so much opposed to the workday and its unfree time of getting things done as they are a space for an alternative kind of work. This chapter proposes that we see O'Hara as poet of service work as much as poet of consumption, reorienting ourselves to the presence of labor (his own and others') within the poems. In particular, Bernes argues, O'Hara adapts the resources of the lyric poem to the transactional space of service work. 2John Ashbery's Free Indirect Labor chapter abstractThe early poems of John Ashbery must be read as a meditation on the plight of labor, particularly white-collar labor, in the postwar United States. Beginning with an early poem, "The Instruction Manual" (1956), and its exploration of the ambiguous class position of white-collar workers, this chapter tracks themes of both labor and management in Ashbery's experimental second book, The Tennis Court Oath. In this book the standpoint of the earlier poem gives way to an explosion of shifting voices as Ashbery's distinctive use of free indirect discourse and other techniques of point of view registers the contemporary breakdown in labor relations and the crisis for established modes of management. In Ashbery's mature style of the 1970s, this chaotic play of voices yields to a comparatively measured technology of point of view, which reflects the new modes of management that followed the crises of the 1960s and 1970s. 3The Poetry of Feedback chapter abstractEmerging from the military-industrial research programs of World War II, cybernetics presents an image of social self-regulation based on reciprocal, horizontal, and participatory relations rather than explicit hierarchies. This is appealing both to firms looking for a way to cut administrative bloat and trim costs and to artists and writers interested in developing a "participatory" practice, one that undoes the division of labor between reader and writer, spectator and art maker. Cybernetics promises a mode of collaboration and collectivity that liberates art from the narrow confines of artists. This chapter examines Hannah Weiner's Code Poems alongside Dan Graham's Works for Magazine Pages, both of which sit at the interstices of experimental poetry and conceptual art and both of which put cybernetic discourse to work to model alternative social relations. In each case, the laboratory of social relations takes postwar labor as its subject. 4The Feminization of Speedup chapter abstractEngaging debates around the status of unpaid reproductive labor, this chapter investigates Bernadette Mayer's multifarious project Memory, which is simultaneously a performance, a conceptual work, an installation, and an epic poem. In attempting to document, down to the smallest detail, every aspect of her life for thirty days—using photographs, audio recordings, and written notation—Mayer effectively demonstrates the subsumption of the entirety of life by the protocols and routines of work as well as the transformation of the relationship between unpaid reproductive work and feminized wage labor. Mayer's "total" artwork, which merges different technologies into a single apparatus, prefigures the reorganization of office work around the personal computer, a technology that has probably done more than anything else to ensure that work and home life are unified by enabling white-collar workers to accomplish tasks from home and, in that sense, never leave work. 5Art, Work, and Endlessness in the 2000s chapter abstractThis chapter skips forward several decades, to the 2000s, and looks at the legacy of the transformations discussed in the preceding chapters. Bernes examines the debates that followed the emergence of "Flarf" and "conceptual poetry," both movements that foregrounded their relationship to contemporary office work. He focuses in particular on the relationship between Flarf poetry, with its rebellious use of work time, work machinery, and work jargon, and the increase in interworker aggression, which he attributes to the inability of workers to find outlets for resistance. Bernes links this horizontalized aggression with the phenomenon of the "Internet troll," who responds to the emasculation that male workers feel as a consequence of the restructuring of labor. By the 2000s, firms had so thoroughly neutralized the aesthetic critique of labor mobilized by preceding generations of artists that it persisted only in various forms of minor rebellion and acting out. 6Epilogue: Overflow chapter abstractThe Epilogue considers the possible fate of the artistic critique of labor in the decades to come. As demand for labor weakens because of ongoing structural transformations, the link between art and labor will likewise weaken, Bernes argues. Thus, artists would do well to revive older traditions linking the poet to wagelessness. The Epilogue examines these traditions, beginning with the Renaissance ballad and continuing through the Romantic poetry of vagrancy and the African American fugitive lyric, linking this poetic history to a theoretical investigation of what Karl Marx calls "surplus populations." The long history of the poetics of wagelessness gives some indication of the aesthetic outlines of the coming era. In closing, Bernes looks at two contemporary poets, Fred Moten and Wendy Trevino, who engage this long tradition and mobilize it to meet the specific conditions of twenty-first-century capitalism.

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Book SynopsisThe Geoffrey Chaucer of this book is not the Father of English Literature that you think you know. In this wide-ranging collection of essays you will find wartime Chaucer, postcolonial Chaucer, feminist Chaucer, misogynist Chaucer, radical Chaucer and conservative Chaucer, among many other interpretations. Featuring beautiful illustrations of early manuscripts and rare editions, Chaucer Here and Now gives a picture of how varied adaptations of and responses to his work have been, from fifteenth- century scribes who finished off incomplete tales, through early printers who constructed Chaucer as the Father of the Nation, to contemporary postcolonial writers such as Zadie Smith. The book moves through years of censorship, the creation of children’s Chaucer, Protestant Chaucer and imperial Chaucer – and the travels of Chaucer all around the world. It also explores Chaucer on film and Chaucer in the present moment. Today’s creative responses follow in a line of irreverent, partial responses that we can trace back to Chaucer’s very first readers and editors, showing that Chaucer is available for every here and now to remake, rework and reinvent.Trade ReviewAficionados will be thrilled by Chaucer Here and Now, which contains gorgeous illustrations of early manuscripts and rare editions. * The Independent *This impressive book ends with a look at Chaucer in the digital age, and how, in the 21st century, “Chaucer is also finding his way into new media”. * The Independent *

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Book SynopsisThis Second Edition is based on the authoritative texts chosen by the editors from their scholarly edition of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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Book SynopsisBook VII of Lucan''s De Bello Ciuili recounts the decisive victory of Julius Caesar over Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus on 9 August 48 BCE. Uniquely within Lucan''s epic, the entire book is devoted to one event, as the narrator struggles to convey the full horror and significance of Romans fighting against Romans and of the republican defeat. Book VII shows both De Bello Ciuili and its impassioned, partisan narrator at their idiosyncratic best. Lucan''s account of Pharsalus well illustrates his poem''s macabre aesthetic, his commitment to paradox and hyperbole, and his highly rhetorical presentation of events. This is the first English commentary on this important book for more than half a century. It provides extensive help with Lucan''s Latin, and seeks to orientate students and scholars to the most important issues, themes and aspects of this brilliant poem.Table of Contents1. Book VII; 2. Battle; 3. The gods and religion; 4. Stoicism and epicureanism; 5. Pompey and Caesar; 6. Sources, models, intertexts; 7. Viewing, seeing, spectatorship; 8. States of mind: madness, hope, fear, anger, joy; 9. Paradox and hyperbole; 10. Apostrophe; 11. Sententiae; 12. Diction, word order, metre; 13. Transmission and text; 14. Manuscripts cited; M. Annaei Lvcani De Bello Civili Liber Septivs; Commentary.

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Book Synopsis''we can speak of no greater contest than Olympia''The Greek poet Pindar (c. 518-428 BC) composed victory odes for winners in the ancient Games, including the Olympics. He celebrated the victories of athletes competing in foot races, horse races, boxing, wrestling, all-in fighting and the pentathlon, and his Odes are fascinating not only for their poetic qualities, but for what they tell us about the Games. Pindar praises the victor by comparing him to mythical heroes and the gods, but also reminds the athlete of his human limitations. The Odes contain versions of some of the best known Greek myths, such as Jason and the Argonauts, and Perseus and Medusa, and are a valuable source for Greek religion and ethics. Pindar''s startling use of language - striking metaphors, bold syntax, enigmatic expressions - makes reading his poetry a uniquely rewarding experience.Anthony Verity''s lucid translations are complemented by an introduction and notes that provide insight into competition, myth,

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Book SynopsisJohn Keats''s abiding poetic legacy is one of extraordinary and triumphant richness. Before the moment of `self-will'' when he declared his intention to be a poet, Keats (1795-1821) had chosen the medical profession. His apothecary''s training influenced his conception of poetry as an art that could mitigate the world''s suffering. Keats''s generous spirit triumphed over personal sadness, finding expression in his concept of life as a `vale of Soul-making'' rather than a vale of tears. He published only three volumes before his death at the age of 25, and, while many of his contemporaries quickly recognized his genius, snobbery and political hostility led the Tory press to vilify him. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of Keats''s major works, demonstrates the remarkable growth in maturity of his verse, from early poems such as `Imitation of Spenser'' and `Ode to Apollo'' to later work such as ''The Eve of St Agnes'', `Ode to a Nightingale'', and `To Autu

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Book SynopsisDemonstrates what Victorian poetry tells us about the relationship between poetry and time.

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents two complementary medieval anthologies containing lyrics by two outstanding Latin poets of the second half of the twelfth century. The collection is further augmented by verse as varied as Christmas poems and satires on the venality of the Roman Curia and immoral bishops.Trade ReviewThe material in the volume repays study and the scholarly apparatus is impressive...This volume should receive a warm welcome. [The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library] will be a boon to professional medievalists, their students and the general reader, and every good library ought to own the series. -- Keith Sidwell * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisStatius’s Silvae, thirty-two occasional poems, were written probably between AD 89 and 96. The verse is light in touch, with a distinct pictorial quality. D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s edition, which replaced the earlier Loeb Classical Library edition by J. H. Mozley, is now reissued with corrections by Christopher A. Parrott.

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Book SynopsisThis critical study covers the whole range of Dylan Thomas's writing, both poetry and prose, in an accessible appraisal of the work and achievement of a major and dynamic poet. It interrelates the man and his national-cultural background by defining in detail the Welshness of his poetic temperament and critical attitudes, as both man and poet. At the same time, it illustrates Thomas's wide knowledge of and impact on the long and varied tradition of poetry in English. In that connection, it delineates and delimits Thomas's relationship to surrealism, compares and contrasts his work with that of other poets of the 1930s and 1940s, and shows how its power survives his early death in 1953, in the decade of the 'Movement' poets and beyond. A major aspect of this book is the close textual analysis of the works quoted; it explores anew the recognition due to the man who wrote the work, and helps us to separate the intrinsic achievement of the work from the foisted perceptions of the 'legend'.Trade ReviewWalford Davies's sympathetic introduction to the character and writing of Dylan Thomas, one of the great twentieth-century poets, is illuminating for new or experienced readers. His appraisal and close readings are warmly personal, rooted in Welsh literary and social culture. - Prof. Barbara Hardy, Professor of English Literature Emeritus, University of London Walford Davies displays commendable but misplaced modesty in calling this extensively revised centenary edition of his celebrated study of Dylan Thomas an 'essay'. It is, rather, a sustained, even ecstatic meditation on the meaning of the life and the work of one of the great English language writers of the twentieth century. The book performs a miracle of compression in distilling a lifetime's learning and reflection into manageable space and offering elegant readings not only of Thomas's key writings in poetry, fiction and broadcast media but of his biographical and cultural contexts. The poet's debt to the Welsh-speaking, Non-Conformist milieu of his immediate ancestry is sensitively illuminated, and his place in the British poetry of his time and in the long history of verse in English from Chaucer to Heaney delineated with formidable skill and erudition. The volume is in the best sense a work of advocacy - and one as dapper, witty and unfanatical as it is impassioned. - Prof. Patrick Crotty, University of AberdeenTable of Contents1 'Begin at the beginning': introductory 2 'The sideboard fruit, the ferns': the poet in suburbia 3 'The loud hill of Wales': theWelshness of the work 4 'I'll put them all in a story by and by': aspects of the prose 5 'Now my saying shall be my undoing': the need to change 6 'Criss-cross rhythms': comparisons of earlier and later poems 77 7 'Ann's bard on a raised hearth': towards 'After the funeral (In Memory of Ann Jones)' 8 'Mostly bare I would lie down': a creative decade ends in war 9 'Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood'; 'This unbelievable lack of wires': wartime, film work, broadcasts 98 10 'We hid our fears in that murdering breath': the war elegies 11 'Parables of sun light': towards 'Poem in October', 'Fern Hill', 'Do not go gentle into that good night' and beyond

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Book SynopsisWith Numinous Seditions, celebrated poet and essayist Tim Lilburn investigates inner dispositions that might help us bear the new sorrows of the climate crisis. The book draws from the West’s almost forgotten contemplative tradition in its Platonic, Islamic, Christian, and Zoharic forms. It also explores ideas from modern philosophers Jan Zwicky, Gillian Rose, Dorothy Day, and Simone Weil, and from contemporary poets Don Domanski, Philip Kevin Paul, Anne Szumigalski, and Roberto Harrison. Lilburn suggests that listening, noticing, reading, and stretching our imaginations are all part of an interior stance that can assist with the difficult tasks of forming deep relationships with the land, with Indigenous peoples, and with pedagogy itself. Numinous Seditions is for scholars and readers interested in poetry, environmental philosophy, and in the possibility of a contemplative politics.Trade Review"Numinous Seditions proposes to expand the human imagination with a call to renewed vision. It invites the reader into active, thoughtful engagement with arguably the most crucial question of our time: what can I make of myself, in the world we have made for ourselves?" H. L. Hix, University of Wyoming"Among the book’s ample gifts are its refusal of confected hope and its hosting of a larger conversation. Here Ibn ‘Arabī brushes foreheads with Anne Szumigalski, Andrew Ahenakew’s polar bear shares the sky with the angel of pseudo-Dionysius. In contemplating shards of ancient wisdom, Lilburn seeks the grace needed to grieve the conflagration of the world." Warren Heiti, author of Attending: An Ethical Art“The lucent essays gathered in Tim Liburn’s new book offer what they adumbrate: a ‘refugium for attentiveness,’ opening lines of earthbound thought, enriching our lexicon, and retrieving forgotten practices in order to cultivate a contemplative, compassionate, and creative modus vivendi in the midst of the unspeakable sorrow of ecological unravelling, climatic disruption, and the continuing legacies of imperialist violence. Amongst them is a meditation on lectio divina that might be taken as a guide for reading these essays themselves, many of them tending towards the fragmentary, punctuated with pauses, and all of them replete with invitations to see, feel, and imagine otherwise.” Kate Rigby, author of Meditations on Creation in an Era of ExtinctionTable of ContentsPreface New Sadness Interiority and Climate Change Contemplative Practices, Contemplative Pedagogies Hoping for Something to Appear | The Poetry of Don Domanski Poetry’s Practice of Philosophy | Anne Szumigalski Reading William Chittick Reading Ibn ‘Arabi Happy Incompetencies, the Self’s Other Routes Poverty and the Doom of Acedia Ontological Loneliness and the Balm of Metaphor Two Readings on Snow, Two Readings on Sorrow In the Time of Extreme Heat, In the Time of the Discovery of Unmarked Graves at the Site of Residential Schools Numinous Seditions Dream Coda Glossary Reading Index

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Book SynopsisA profound vision of the inseparability of Western philosophy and its living languageTrade Review"No one now writing on literature can match Steiner as polymath and polyglot, and few can equal the verve and eloquence of his writing." -- Robvert Alter - The Washington Post "Illumination and attractively undogmatic" -- The New Yorker

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Book SynopsisSylvia Plath (1932-1963) was one of the writers who defined the course of twentieth-century poetry. Alongside a selection of photographs and Plath's own drawings, they masterfully contextualise what the pages disclose.This later correspondence witnesses Plath and Hughes becoming major, influential contemporary writers, as it happened.

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Book SynopsisThe first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. SmithA Penguin ClassicJoshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradTrade Review“You feel you’re meeting them on a human level. The book is slim and portable, as the best poetry books are (…) Bennett and McCarthy, in their introduction, set out their criteria for inclusion in ‘Minor Notes.’ They list things like ‘minimal appearance’ in anthologies and ‘very little, if anything, in the way of secondary literature focusing on their work.’ But it becomes plain that they chose these poets because they still speak across generations. This is a passion project.(…) This is a reclamation project that goes through you like a spear.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, both scholars of African American literature, aim to widen the canon of Black poetry by spotlighting poets who have been overlooked (…) giving readers an understanding of their unique voice and poetic concerns. (…) David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Henrietta Cordelia Ray, Anne Spencer, and other poets interrogate everything from labor politics to friendship in finely wrought lyrics that delight and surprise, prompting the reader to wonder how these geniuses could have been sidelined for so long.” —Poets & Writers“The first in a series recovering the out-of-print words of Black poets whose work shaped the 19th and 20th centuries, Minor Notes, Volume 1 draws a bright line between the creations of the past and those of today’s bards. Curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, while featuring a foreword from former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, the book centers clear, resonant voices—like that of Angelina Weld Grimké’s, who ruminates joyfully on the beauty of living in a Black body.”—Essence

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Book SynopsisOne of America''s most celebrated poets, Emily Dickinson was virtually unpublished in her lifetime. When a slim volume of her poems emerged on the American scene in 1890, her work created shockwaves that have not subsided yet. Famously precise and sparse, Emily Dickinson''s poetry is often described as philosophical, both because her poetry grapples with philosophical topics like death, spirituality, and the darkening operations of the mind, and because she approaches those topics in a characteristically philosophical manner: analyzing and extrapolating from close observation, exploring alternatives, and connecting thoughts into cumulative demonstrations. But unlike Lucretius or Pope, she cannot be accused of producing versified treatises. Many of her poems are unsettling in their lack of conclusion; their disparate insights often stand in conflict; and her logic turns crucially on imagery, juxtaposition, assonance, slant rhyme, and punctuation. The six chapters of this volume collectiTable of ContentsEditor's Introduction: Emily Dickinson's Epistemic Ambitions for Poetry Chapter 1: Forms of Emotional Knowing and Unknowing: Skepticism and Belief in Dickinson's Poetry, Rick Anthony Furtak Chapter 2: Interiority and Expression in Dickinson's Lyrics, Magdalena Ostas Chapter 3: How to Know Everything, Oren Izenberg Chapter 4: Form and Content in Emily Dickinson's Poetry, Antony Aumann Chapter 5: The Uses of Obstruction, David Hills Chapter 6: Dickinson and Pivoting Thought, Eileen John

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Book SynopsisThis volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of William Blake (1757-1827). The edition features a selection of Blake's poetry, illuminated poetry, and prose, and includes an Introduction, Chronology, and full commentary notes.Trade ReviewThe latest edition of Blakes selected works rich with both textual and explanatory annotations and 120 black-and-white images. * Wayne C. Ripley, An Illustrated Quarterly *Peter Otto's William Blake (Oxford, 2018) presents the latest edition of Blake's selected works. Part of the 21st-Centu-ry Oxford Authors series, the book runs over 800 pages, and is rich with both textual and explanatory annotations and 120 black-and-white images. The works are arranged chronologically rather than generically, even to the point of offering Songs of Innocence alone and again with Songs of Experience. * Wayne C. Ripley, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chronology From Poetical Sketches (1783) [An Island in the Moon] (c.1785) From Annotations to Lavater's Aphorisms on Man (1788) All Religions Are One (1788) There Is No Natural Religion (1788) From Annotations to Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (1784; notes c.1789) Songs of Innocence (1789) The Book of Thel (1789) From Annotations to Swedenborg's Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (1788; notes c.1790) From Annotations to Swedenborg's Divine Providence (1790; notes c.1790) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) From The Notebook (c.1791-93) Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) America a Prophecy (1793) To the Public [Prospectus] (1793) From The Notebook (c.1793) For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793) Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) Europe a Prophecy (1794) The First Book of Urizen (1794) The Song of Los (1795) The Book of Ahania (1795) The Book of Los (1795) From Vala or The Four Zoas (1797-c.1807) From The Notebook (c.1797-99) From Annotations to Watson's An Apology for the Bible (1797; notes 1798) From Annotations to Bacon's Essays (1798; notes c.1798) From Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1798; notes c.1798-1809) Letters [1799-1800] From Annotations to Boyd's Translation of the Inferno (1785; notes c.1800) Letters [1802-3] Memorandum in Refutation of the . . . Complaint of John Scolfield (August 1803] Letters [1803-4] From The Notebook (c.1803-04) Milton a Poem (c.1804-1811) [The Pickering Manuscript] (c.1805-07) From The Notebook (c.1807-09) Blake's Exhibition (1809) From Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804-c.1820) From [A Vision of the Last Judgment] (1810) From [A Public Address to the Chalcographic Society] (c.1810) Europe, Title page (late revisions, c.1815-20) From Annotations to Spurzheim's Observations (1817; notes c.1818) Letters [1818] The Everlasting Gospel (c.1818) For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise (1820) Annotations to Berkeley's Siris (1744; notes c.1820) From Annotations to Wordsworth's Preface to The Excursion (1814; notes 1826) From Annotations to Wordsworth's Poems (1815; notes 1826) From Annotations to Thornton's The Lord's Prayer (1827) Letter [1827] On Homers Poetry and On Virgil (c.1820) The Ghost of Abel (1822) [Jehovah]& his two Sons Satan & Adam [The Laocoön] (c.1826-27) List of Abbreviations Notes Index of Titles and First Lines

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Book Synopsis''Whoever wishes to hear about, and to know about, kings and heirs, about who first ruled England and which kings it had, Master Wace, who is telling the truth about this, has translated this.''Wace''s Roman de Brut (1155) can be seen as the gateway to the history of the Britons for both French and English speakers of the time, and thus to Arthurian history, as the first complete Old French adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth''s Latin History of the Kings of Britain (late 1130s), in which Arthur appears for the first time as king of the Britons. The Roman de Brut was a foundational work, an inspiration for a series of anonymous verse Bruts of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and for the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut -- the most widely read French vernacular text on this material in medieval England -- as well as a forerunner of the Middle English Brut tradition, including Layamon''s Brut (c. 1200). Wace''s poem thus inaugurates and shapes Brut traditions, including Arthurian tales, iTable of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography Summary of the Text ROMAN DE BRUT Explanatory Notes Manuscripts Glossary Index of Personal Names Index of Geographical Names

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Book SynopsisThis edition includes all of the known surviving writings of the poet Phillis Wheatley Peters (1753-1784), several of which have been discovered since the last attempt at a complete edition in 2001. The poems and the extant prose writings are accompanied by an Introduction to her life and times, and textual and explanatory notes.Trade ReviewVincent Carretta's edition will be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Wheatley Peters's life and work... The vanishing point of [Wheatley Peters's] work stands at the far side of the history of enslavement. Given that the poems do exist, the critical imperative is to think carefully about how, and under what conditions, they came to be. Carretta makes a crucial contribution to this project. * Andrea Haslanger, Eighteenth - Century Fiction *This text leaves no stone unturned to provide a clear path for teaching the Wheatley corpus with the added benefit of drawing new and contemporary allusions to the study of "racism, sexism, and slavery", as "issues" that the early Black American poet "subtly and indirectly confronts"... Clearly, Writings is soon to become a standard for early American literature courses and one of the most practical, convenient, and useful classroom tools. * April Langley, University of Missouri-Columbia, Early American Literature *This edition, prepared by the outstanding scholar in the field, supersedes previous collections from Julian D. Mason (1966; 1989), John C. Shields (1988) and Carretta himself (Penguin, 2001). It is the fullest in scope, with abundant bibliographical detail, and it takes advantage of the steady growth in secondary literature... the most generally informative and revealing edition that has ever appeared. * Pat Rogers, Author of The Poet and the Publisher: The Case of Alexander Pope, Esq., of Twickenham versus Edmund Curll, Bookseller in Grub Street, Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Editorial Note Note on Money The Writings of Phillis Wheatley Textual and Explanatory Notes Index of First Lines of Titles of Phillis Wheatley's Poems Index of First Lines of Phillis Wheatley's Poems General Index

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Book SynopsisTheocritus: Space, Absence, and Desire discusses many of Theocritus''s Idylls with emphasis on how these poems construct space--its contours and borders, along with the people, animals, and objects that fill it--and the equally important role of absence. Drawing on spatial theory from anthropology and cultural geography, author William G. Thalmann studies each poem in itself and in its connections with other poems, so that a loose coherence emerges among them. Spatially, the Ptolemaic empire provides a setting and reference point for the various types of Idylls (bucolic, urban, mythological, and encomiastic poems), in ways that help legitimate it. In all the idylls, however, space is constructed selectively from particular perspectives, so that it reflects and shapes people''s relations with each other and humans'' relations with nature. The bucolic Idylls in particular raise questions about being in and out of place and relations between self and other that would have been important under the conditions of mobility and intercultural contact in the early Hellenistic period. Yet theirs is a fictional world, defined more by its margins than by its center, and visions of fullness and presence of nature are always distanced from the reader. Absence is constitutive of this world, just as absence of the beloved is the precondition for the desire of bucolic characters and prompts their singing. Their desire mirrors the desire of readers for the absent bucolic world that the poems arouse and that keeps them reading.Trade ReviewThalmann offers a brilliant reading of the Theocritean corpus through the lens of space and location. Treating both realistic subjects under Ptolemaic rule and imaginary characters dwelling in bucolic space, Thalmann focuses on the dynamic of absence and desire as Theocritus' overarching theme. A pleasure to read! * Kathryn Gutzwiller, University of Cincinnati *This is a nuanced discussion of Theocritean bucolic space: how it differs from urban, agricultural, marine, and mythological realms, and the ways in which boundary dynamics inform the texts of the received corpus. A fitting successor to his work on the Argonautica. * Susan Stephens, Stanford University *Altogether this book is a delight; Thalmann effectively uses the idea of imaginative spaces to illuminate Theocritus' creation of his bucolic world while keeping the focus on the poetry, not the theory. At the same time, he engages contemporary concerns in Hellenistic poetry: the poetry book, engagement with contemporary politics, particularly the Ptolemaic Empire and Alexandrian self-consciousness. * Classical Journal-Online *Both scholarly and accessible, the study fills a need for a current book-length treatment of Theocritus and contributes to important themes in Hellenistic poetry more broadly. * Choice *[Thalmann] has authored an elegant and sensitive study that repays close engagement. It is a necessary read for anyone seriously interested in the study of Theocritus. * Classical Review *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Note on Text and Transliteration Chapter 1: Theocritean Spaces 1: The Bucolic and Urban Poems Chapter 2: Theocritean Spaces 2: Mythological and Encomiastic Space Chapter 3: The Poetics of Absence Chapter 4: On the Margins of Bucolic Chapter 5: Conclusion References Indexes

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Book SynopsisOne of a series designed to provide a new, accessible approach to the works of great poets and playwrights. Each text includes general notes on the text; discussion of themes, issues and context; and suggestions for further reading.

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Book SynopsisIn this second edition of William Wordsworth: A Life, Stephen Gill draws on knowledge of the poet''s creative practices and his reputation and influence in his life-time and beyond. Refusing to treat the poet''s later years as of little interest, this biography presents a narrative of the whole of Wordsworth''s long life--1770 to 1850--tracing the development from the adventurous youth who alone of the great Romantic poets saw life in revolutionary France to the old man who became Queen Victoria''s Poet Laureate. The various phases of Wordsworth''s life are explored with a not uncritical sympathy; the narrative brings out the courage he and his wife and family were called upon to show as they crafted the life they wanted to lead. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth the writer, the personal relationships that nourished his creativity are fully treated, as are the historical circumstances that affected the production of his poetry. Wordsworth, it is widely believed, valued poetic spontaneity. He did, but he also took pains over every detail of the process of publication. The foundation of this second edition of the biography remains, as it was of the first, a conviction that Wordsworth''s poetry, which has given pleasure and comfort to generations of readers in the past, will continue to do so in the years to come.Trade ReviewThose who do not own the first edition should acquire this one...Essential. * T. Ware, Queen's University at Kingston, CHOICE *One of the many enjoyments of Stephen Gill's William Wordsworth: A Life is the quiet pride it communicates in a job well done. Wordsworth emerges from this comprehensive and absorbing study as a man whose sense of purpose and duty steadily grew from youth to old age. * Freya Johnston, The Guardian *[William Wordsworth: A Life] is judicious, fair-minded, panoptic. * Brad Leithauser, The Wall Street Journal *The richly revised second edition of Gill's biography (the first appeared in 1990), refuses the usual trajectory and instead celebrates 'a multifaceted, highly creative life of eighty years'. * Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books *A magnificent second edition, which displays the same qualities of quiet authority, tact and resistance to speculation, and thus merits consideration as a work in its own right. * Pamela Clemit, Times Literary Supplement *Reading Gill's work is a reminder of the pleasures and advantages of whole life biography. * Kathryn Hughes, New York Review of Books *Gill gives us the Wordsworth who bore life's tribulations as a philosopher, the Wordsworth renowned as a poet, but also the deeply human portrait of Wordsworth the man. * Chris Townsend, The Wordsworth Trust *Gill is the leading authority on the poet and writes in great detail about his life and work; an essential book for all students. * Robert Tanitch, The Mature Times *An essential companion to students of Wordsworth with much to offer the general reader. * Will Smith, Cumbria Life *This biography not only presents Wordsworth in the round, but also grants us a peep into his very soul. * Steve Craggs, Northern Echo *Stephen Gill's masterly and immensely readable "William Wordsworth: A Life". * Michael Dirda, The Washington Post *Review from previous edition The most scholarly and up-to-date book on Wordsworth... His judgement and interests are eminently sensible and show a full picture of Wordsworth. * Nikolai Tolstoy, Daily Mail *Impressive new Clarendon biography ...William Wordsworth: A Life is every inch the new definitive work. Gill has taken full account of Wordsworth studies in the past 30 years, blended the new materials with the old, and come out with a book that is scholarly, readable, likely to last. * Jonathan Wordsworth, Sunday Times *excellent biography of Wordsworth ... Gill is master of the very extensive primary and secondary sources, and a particular expert on the manuscripts, which the poet subjected to constant revision. * William Scammell, The Listener *not least among the virtues of this excellent biography is the way in which Stephen Gill balances the inner against the external man ... This is the kind of biography which any writer would be delighted to inspire, let alone deserve ... it is a measure of the significance of this biography that its seriousness matches that of Wordsworth itself. * Peter Ackroyd, The Times *all stolid good sense * Blake Morrison, The Bookseller *thorough, scholarly biography * Anthony Powell, Weekend Telegraph *Stephen Gill's new biography ... is enormously well-informed and avoids extravagant speculation, ... It provides an entertaining, shrewd, and manageably-sized narrative of Wordsworth's life * Peter Swaab, Sunday Telegraph *Stephen Gill's admirable biography ... it succeeds, where such biographies often fail, in transforming the life into the work by actively exploring, not avoiding, the complex problems that Wordsworth's self-account presents to his biographer. * London Review of Books *lively, painstaking book * Archie Hind, Glasgow Herald *Gill has already proved himself as an editor of Wordsworth's manuscripts and now turns that research to elegant profit. * Anthony Lane, Independent *It is difficult to see how a biography of Wordsworth could be enthralling, but Stephen Gill has made his so. This densely particularised and humane biography returns us anew to the poet's questions with an inwardness and sympathy few previous writers have displayed. * Isobel Armstrong, Southampton University, TES *the first comprehensive biography of Wordsworth since Mary Moorman's 30 years ago. * Blake Morrison, Observer *not many biographies are so admirably devoid of pretentiousness, silliness, and banality. * Chloe Chard, Weekend Financial Times *in Stephen Gill's monumental work, exacting, controlled, measured and profound, we have a moving portrait of a great poet the confirming of whose reputation has been substantially advanced by Gill's scholarship and judgment. * Bruce Arnold, Irish Independent *Gill is an immensely learned, scrupulous and judicious guide ... It is a mark of a good biography that the peripheral figures - the friends and acquaintances - are brought to life by a few swift, bold strokes ... A new biography of Wordsworth was certainly needed, and this one will be an indispensable companion for Lake Poet enthusiasts. Its insights are astute and its choice of quotation excellent; it could not have condensed more information into a single volume, yet it never becomes a mere procession of facts ... this volume is fluent and comprehensive. * Jonathan Bate, Country Life *a large, very readable study by Oxford scholar Stephen Gill who makes use of much fresh material. * Michael Field, The Star *thorough and scholarly biography ... Many books have been on Wordsworth, but this one takes a fresh look at contemporary records and the mass of material which has been unearthed since the last serious biography, a quarter-of-a-century ago. * John Hurst, Cumberland & Westmorland Herald *What Gill has done, very well, is to match the poetry to the poet's development. Gill, with his illuminating extracts, saves us from our own ignorance. * Anthony Hern, London Evening Standard *this biography clears new and central ground for future academic revaluations of the poet and his work ... It renders Wordsworth newly accessible and calls attention to his reciprocal relation to, and profound effects on, the national life. * New York Times Book Review *a lovingly told story * Christopher Hall, The Countryman *a thorough and detailed study of Wordsworth's life in relation to the poetry ... Gill is a thoughtful critic as well as a careful biographer ... sympathetic study. * J. B. Pick, The Scotsman *When dealing with politics or family matters Gill can be very shrewd, and especially so in his subtle account of the growing strains between Wordsworth and Coleridge after 1800. And on textual matters Gill writes with an authority well beyond that of any previous biographer. Many of his poetry discussions are first rate, sensitive and illuminating. * Norman Fruman, Times Literary Supplement *an eminently accessible as well as definitive study of the poet's life. * Sunday Times *not a general biography of the Great Lakes poet, nor is it merely a critique of his work ... It is an authoritative and readable study ... of Wordsworth's writing in an effort to lay bare the poet's life as a writer of poetry "full of human understanding and experience." ... a fascinating and enlightening study ... few will deny it's value in bringing the man and his work into fresh perspective. * Evelyn Holtzhausen, Cape Times *This isn't a critical book ... and discussion of the poetry is carefully fused with Wordsworth's self-discussion. ... this biography is good value ... Always well-written, it wears its substantial scholarship lightly * Simon Petch, Sydney Morning Herald *Stephen Gill ... has written what must now be the definitive biography ... a multitudinous life about which, even after reading this thorough and admirable biography we still wish we knew more. * David Parkin, Yorkshire Post *a model literary biography * Bernard Bergonzi, The Tablet *compendious new biography of William Wordsworth ... solidly constructed * Chicago Tribune *the biography is both scholarly and readable ... If William Wordsworth: A Life brings new readers to the poems or old readers back it will have succeeded admirably in its aim. * Peter Dyson, University of Toronto, The Globe and Mail *Gill has performed a remarkable act of revisionary scholarship by shifting the bulk of the story to the years at Rydal Mount ... this is a distinguished work of literary biography ... The biographer's wide-ranging knowledge of the period adds immensely to the success of this study. It will be many years before another biography of Wordsworth is required. * Jay Parini, USA Today *He offers a more factually meticulous version of the poet's early years to stand beside the mythopoeic self-presentation of the poetry. He understands the importance of Wordsworth's inner life. Gill's biography quietly but memorably reveals the drama of Wordsworth's life. * Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor *fine new biography ... Mr Gill's biography is up-to-date in its scholarship ... It neither sentimentalizes nor oversimplifies. * Richard Locke, Columbia University, Wall Street Journal *all stolid good sense * John Linklater, The Bookseller *this biography contains much to interest scholars * Henry Bartlett, The Courier-Mail *it is robust and intelligent on his marvellous body of poetry * Observer *Gill's narrative is well-paced and well-written. Gill's account is comprehensive and engaging, and skilful in its corporation of biographical detail. The Wordsworth specialist, as well as the general reader, will come away from it refreshed and inspired. * Charles Rzepka, Boston University, Essays in Criticism *eloquent and straight-forward retelling of Wordsworth's life * J.D. Gutteridge, Notes and Queries *triumphantly reconciles a vast amount of material to produce a life of Wordsworth that is sensitive to modern scholarship and faithful to the age in which the poet himself lived ... Stephen Gill has written a biography of Wordsworth for our times, and it will remain the standard life of the poet for many years to come. * Nicholas Roe, University of St Andrews, Review of English Studies, Vol. XLI, No. 164, Nov '90 *An assured blend of old and recently-researched material which combines fluently into a vibrant study of the poet. Mr Gill avoids wild speculation and brings us the essence of the man thankfully devoid of spurious conjecture. * Tony Firth, Yorkshire Post *a unique look at this Romantic poet * Windsor Star *Table of ContentsPart I: BEGININGS 1: 1770-1787 2: 1787-1792 3: 1793-1795 4: 1795-1797 5: 1797-1798 6: 1798-1799 Part II: MIDDLE YEARS 7: 1800-1802 8: 1803-1805 9: 1806-1810 10: 1810-1815 11: 1816-1820 Part III: LATER YEARS 12: 1820-1822 13: 1822-1832 14: 1833-1839 15: 1840-1850

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Book SynopsisCovering an extensive range of poets, this is the first comprehensive study of the sonnet from the Renaissance to the present. It traces the development of the sonnet and explores why the sonnet is such an attractive form for writers and how it works in terms of shape and rhyme scheme.Trade ReviewThere is no better close reader of the formal effects of sonnet structure, sound, syntax, rhyme, and rhythm. He exfoliates their localised effects with such deft care and artfulness ... Regan manages somehow to hold our attention throughout and focus his interpretive energies so that each sonnet gets its due and reveals its singular qualities. To read The Sonnet is to have the eye trained to see more, even in sonnets of well-worn familiarity. From now on, whenever I teach or write about sonnets, the first question I will ask myself is: what did Regan have to say? * Joshua Reid, The Spenser Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: The Renaissance Sonnet 2: The Romantic Sonnet 3: The Victorian Sonnet 4: The Irish Sonnet 5: The American Sonnet 6: The Modern Sonnet Epilogue: The Sonnet and its Travels Bibliography

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Book Synopsis''The Apennines are Italy'' exclaimed The Examiner two centuries ago, yet this unique region and its striking literary and cultural connections are underappreciated in the English-speaking world. Apennine Crossings: Travellers on the Edge of Tuscany links a twenty-first century journey in the mountains of Northern Italy to past writers, routes, and travellers. It follows the modern long-distance walking trail of the ''Great Apennine Excursion'', whilst moving back and forth in time: from the Middle Ages to World War Two and from the journeys of pilgrims, merchants, and tourists to those of soldiers, partisans, and poets. Stories of past travellers in the region continually intersect with a contemporary account of a walk across the ridge of the Northern Apennines.Alongside Nick Havely''s present-day narrator and traveller, the cast of characters includes major writers and poets, such as Dante, Montaigne, Goethe, Shelley, and Stendhal, together with a multitude of less well-known figures whose journeys, experiences, and responses cast new light on a landscape that is close to yet remote from the sites typically visited by modern travellers to Italy. Havely draws these earlier travellers'' stories from a wide range of published and unpublished sources such as letters, journals, memoirs, poems, and interviews. Together, they illustrate several significant themes: the histories of mountain passes, remote lakes, and ancient sanctuaries; perceptions of the mountains; the social and religious culture of the Northern Apennines; the preoccupations of literary tourism; the impact of campaigns and conflict during World War Two; and the effects of depopulation and deforestation.The Apennine region features in its full literary, historical, and cultural richness. Included are twenty-six illustrations, with maps for the whole route and for the sections covered by each of the book''s seven chapters.

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Book SynopsisWedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greece traces the wedding song tradition, its imagery, and its tropes as a genre that became crystallized throughout the ages. It explores how wedding poetics permeates ancient Greek literature. It first analyzes how explicit or implicit matrimonial references shape archaic epic diction and become an integral part of epic discourse; orally circulating texts, such as wedding songs, could have a life of their own but, beyond their original context, could also become an integral part of a different genre, especially epic and drama. This author discusses the multiple platforms that enrich the wedding song tradition, including children''s songs, hymns, paeans, and ululations, arguing for a combination of ritualized discourse with ludic childhood poetics. With an approach from cognitive and trauma studies, such references can be more revealing of the female experience than previously acknowledged. This book resists the idea that a wedding constitutes an initiation ritual, arguing that what on the surface may seem like a transition to a new phase reveals other underlying trends that work against the concept of a passage. It further considers how emotion is staged and revisits the poetics of return by looking at patterns such as the eloping, returning, failed, and dead bride. Finally, the theme of separation and return as an exemplification of a distinct female nostos is revisited in female-authored poetry, which helps us decode the complex interweaving of wedding performances and lamentation, among other types of performance.

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Book SynopsisThe monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. Geoffrey Chaucer has long been lauded as the Father of English Poetry. For later aTrade Reviewher overall argument, that The Canterbury Tales insistently deauthorizes paternal authority, is convincing and at times compelling. Critics should find many of her readings useful. * Thomas Prendergast, Speculum *Seal assures us that despite Chaucer's clear-eyed sense of the inevitable losses and imperfections of generation, he nevertheless understands it as an essential human activity. Memory and authority may be fragile and limited, but they are not therefore to be abandoned entirely, and the pilgrims, the frame, and the tales themselves show us Chaucer's sense of the appeal and the uncertainty of both paternity and poetry... Father Chaucer offers a new angle on Chaucer's undoubted fascination with authority of various kinds... * Claire M. Waters, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Volume 42, 2020 *Samantha Katz Seal upends conventional thinking on the supportive structures of the patriarchy ... [her] work challenges accepted conventions in ways that are both surprising and long overdue. * The Year's Work in English Studies, Vol. 100.1 *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Dream of Father Chaucer Part I. On Certainty 1: Sexual Exegetics and the Female Text 2: The Uneasy Institution: Lineage and the Wife of Bath Part II. On Creation 3: Uncertain Labor: Conception and the Problem of Productivity 4: Adultery's Heirs: Multiplying Excess Part III: On Likeness 5: Almost Heirs: Daughters and Disappointments 6: Father Chaucer's Heirs

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