Literary studies: poetry and poets Books
Liverpool University Press Twenty-First-Century Symbolism: Verlaine,
Book SynopsisHow do the writings of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé speak to our time? Why should we continue to read these poets today? How might a contemporary reading of their poetry differ from readings delivered in previous centuries? Twenty-First-Century Symbolism argues that Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé prefigure a view of human subjectivity that is appropriate for our times: we cannot be separated from the worlds in which we live and evolve; human beings both mediate and are mediations of the environments we traverse and that traverse us, whether these are natural, urban, linguistic, or technological environments. The ambition of the book is therefore twofold: on the one hand, it aims to offer new readings of the three poets, demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary debates, putting them into dialogue with a philosophical corpus that has not yet played a role in the study of nineteenth century French poetry; on the other, the book relies on the three poets to establish an understanding of human subjectivity that is in tune with our twenty-first century concerns.Trade Review‘This excellent monograph will find a broad, enthusiastic readership in the fields of French literature and critical theory, encompassing a wide variety of areas such as ecocriticism, phenomenology, affect, and various branches of the digital humanities. The field of nineteenth-century French literature will benefit enormously from this study, which significantly refreshes the way in which we approach well-known texts (too well-known, one often feels) using ambitious, cutting-edge critical lenses.’ David Evans, University of St Andrews‘What Lübecker provides us with is a new set of readings that are additive—we learn more about the three poets, rather than necessarily needing to rethink or revise what we knew about them already. Verlaine may be thought of, variously, as an impressionist or musical poet, but here Lübecker exposes his environmental activist side. Similarly, Baudelaire may be predominantly known as the poet of modernity, but here Lübecker reveals his more ecological dimensions… This study will be of significant interest to both specialists of nineteenth-century literature and critical theorists exploring new modes of conceptualizing the literary in relation to environmental debate.’ Helen Abbott, Modern & Contemporary France‘In this eloquent book, Nikolaj Lübecker provides a fresh way of reading three of the major poets of nineteenth-century France… Lübecker, true to the ecological and non-anthropocentric ethos of the book, stays in the background, letting the texts speak among themselves, and yet he subtly performs operations, like Mallarmé, that trouble our critical certainties.’ Patrick Bray, French StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionTwenty-First-Century Symbolism: Individuation and Practice: Verlaine, Baudelaire, MallarméChapter 1: Haiku-Verlainei. Discrete Ecstasiesii. Haiku-individuationiii. Individuation in Simondoniv. Verlainian HaikuConclusionChapter 2: The Verlaine-Environmenti. Verlaine and the Imageii. Three Verlaine-Readers: Bernadet, Richard and Scottiii. Verlaine Todayiv. The Verlaine-EnvironmentCoda: In the Grass…Chapter 3: Affectivity and Ecology in Baudelaire’s Twilighti. The Affective Ecology of ‘Le Crépuscule du soir’: Baudelaire and Massumiii. Phenomenology and Spiritual Materialism: Poulet and Poeiii. The Politics of Atmospheres: Chambers and RancièreConclusionChapter 4: Baudelaire and the Power of Colouri. The Process-Relational World of Colourii. The Colour of the Sun: Baudelaire with Cézanneiii. Baudelaire Was Never Modern: Art as Ecological PracticeCoda: From Baudelaire to MallarméChapter 5: Mallarmé and the Individu-Livrei. The Book-Event: Politics and Beautyii. The Book as Practiceiii. The Production of the Individu-LivreChapter 6: Mallarmé’s Demonic Media Theoryi. Demonic Modulationsii. Mallarméan Individuation and Twenty-First-Century Mediaiii. Mallarmé and Cyberneticsiv. The Livre and the Anti-LivreCoda: Is Mallarmé Digital?ConclusionBibliographyIndex
£104.00
Liverpool University Press John Keats' Medical Notebook: Text, Context, and
Book SynopsisJohn Keats was a trained surgeon who studied at Guy’s Hospital, London while simultaneously making his way as a poet. This book focuses attention on an important but hitherto neglected Keats manuscript: the notebook he maintained during this period. Reconstructing the lively medical world that played a formative role in Keats’ intellectual and imaginative development, it seeks to show the intriguing connections between Keats’ medical knowledge and his greatest poetry. It offers new research on Keats’ medical career – including a new edition of his medical Notebook compiled from the manuscript – and recovers the various ways in which Keats’ creativity found expression in his two careers of medicine and poetry, enriching both. Topics explored include the ‘hospital poems’ Keats wrote at Guy’s; the medical milieu of his daily life; his methods of working as revealed by his medical Notebook and other archival sources; and the medical contexts that informed his composition of Endymion and the collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems (1820).John Keats’ Medical Notebook: Text, Context and Poems reveals how Keats’ visceral knowledge of human life, gained during his medical training at Guy’s, transformed him into ‘a mighty poet of the human heart’.Trade ReviewReviews ‘John Keats’s Medical Notebook is an ingenious roadmap to conceptual issues in the teaching of Romantic medicine; its informed annotations and originality of research reveal the depth of Keats’s knowledge and comprehension of what he had learned in theoretical and practical medical science.’Hermione de Almeida, Walter Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Tulsa 'Readers of Keats--and most assuredly not only those interested in Medicine--will find much of value in Ghosh's book. In clean, precise, and accessible prose that belies the depth of archival research that went into the book's making, Ghosh convincingly makes her case for a new focus on the medical Notebook, adding a fresh and forceful voice to those in the field arguing for renewed attention to the young Keats. If the medical Notebook "was a dynamic repository of evolving knowledge" for Keats, Ghosh's study will be one for us.'James Robert Allard, Review 19'John Keats’ Medical Notebook is well written and well referenced... A scholarly contribution to the literature about Keats, the book provides new insights and analyses of his medical student days and how medical training influenced his brilliant and remarkable poetry.'Arpan K. Banerjee, Hektoen International Journal‘There is a generosity in the care that has been taken in preparing this new edition that reveals an investment in the future work that will undoubtedly be generated by this project, as much as in its own attendant literary analysis.’ Meegan Hasted, European Romantic Review‘Ghosh’s careful explications help guide the reader through the sometimes obscure and complex medical material, while the provision of concise biographical detail and relevant intellectual context of the people mentioned is also helpful. Clear explanations of terminology are not only essential for non-medical literary scholars, the contextualisation of nineteenth-century medical vocabulary will surely be welcomed, too, by those with a knowledge of modern-day medicine.’ Octavia Cox, Romantic TextualitiesTable of ContentsIntroductionJohn Keats' Medical Notebook: An Annotated Edition1. John Keats' Medical Notebook: An Overview2. John Keats' 'Guy's Hospital' Poetry3. Keats' Medical Milieu4. John Keats at Guy's: Scholar and Poet5. Endymion and the Physiology of Passion6. 'The Only State for the Best Sort of Poetry'Conclusion
£27.99
Liverpool University Press British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas
£34.99
Liverpool University Press Wendy Cope
Book SynopsisWendy Cope is one of Britain’s most popular poets: her first two collections have together sold almost half a million copies, and in 1998, when Ted Hughes died, she was the BBC listeners’ choice to succeed him as Poet Laureate. She is also contrarian and sometimes controversial, and has been celebrated as one of the finest parodists of her, or any, generation. It is perhaps surprising, then, that her popular appeal has been met with critical near-silence. After five major collections, Cope has received only piecemeal critical attention, mostly confined to book reviews. This is the first in-depth study of her poetry. Drawing on Cope's published work, archival material and correspondence, Rory Waterman considers her main collections, her works for children and her uncollected poems, with many close readings, and detailed considerations of her cultural and literary contexts and her poetic development.Table of ContentsIntroduction1. ‘I learned to get my own back’: Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986)2. ‘He thinks you’re crazy’: Serious Concerns (1992)3. ‘Still warm, still warm’: If I Don’t Know (2001)4. ‘Your anger is a sin’: Family Values (2011)5. ‘About the human heart’: Anecdotal Evidence (2018)6. ‘The gift of changing’: Cope’s Poems for Children7. ‘They waited patiently’: Uncollected Cope
£16.99
Liverpool University Press William Wordsworth and Modern Travel: Railways,
Book SynopsisThis book explores Wordsworth’s extraordinary influence on the tourist landscapes of the Lake District throughout the age of railways, motorcars and the First World War. It reveals how Wordsworth’s response to railways was not a straightforward matter of opposition and protest; his ideas were taken up by both advocates and opponents of railways, and through their controversies had a surprising impact on the earliest motorists as they sought a language to describe the liberty and independence of their new mode of transport. Once the age of motoring was underway, the outbreak of the First World War encouraged British people to connect Wordsworth’s patriotic passion with his wish to protect the Lake District as a national heritage – a transition that would have momentous effects in the interwar period, when popular motoring paradoxically brought a vogue for open-air activities and a renewal of romantic pedestrianism. With the arrival of global tourism, preservation of the cultural landscape of the Lake District became an urgent national and international concern. This book explores how patterns of tourist behaviour and environmental awareness changed in the century of popular tourism, examining how Wordsworth’s vision and language shaped modern ideas of travel, self-reliance, landscape and environment, cultural heritage, preservation and accessibility.Trade Review‘For its rigorous research and elucidation of the impact of transport upon the evolving experience of landscape and tourism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, Yoshikawa’s work offers both an insightful and significant contribution to current scholarship.’ Jules Gehrke, Journal of British Studies 'Yoshikawa’s archival work, as ever, is outstanding, and her claims are generally so well grounded as to seem almost obvious once the evidence is presented ... Yoshikawa’s book allowed us to take imaginative journeys while marking advancements in the thriving subdisciplines of Romantic literary geography.' Paul Westover, The Wordsworth Circle‘Saeko Yoshikawa in her new William Wordsworth and Modern Travel: Railways, Motorcars and the Lake District, 1830–1940 includes chapters… with an abundance of fascinating information, anecdotes, and illustrations.’ Eric C. Walker, European Romantic ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Wordsworth and Railways2. The Railway Controversy in Wordsworth's Lake District3. The Arrival of Motorcars4. Romantic Motorists, Romantic Cyclists5. The First World War and the Lake District6. Post-War Motoring in the Lake District, 1920s-30s7. Wordsworthian Tourism in the Interwar PeriodEpilogue: 'Access for All'
£34.99
Liverpool University Press Musical Wordsworth: Romantic Soundscape and
Book SynopsisIn his Essay of 1815, Wordsworth asserts that ‘a pure and refined scheme of harmony’ must prevail in all ‘higher poetry’. This idea of a structured and complex form of ‘harmony’ was similarly noted earlier in The Prelude (1805), where Wordsworth famously claimed that the human mind is ‘framed even like the breath / And harmony of music’.Musical Wordsworth presents an original understanding of Wordsworthian harmony by examining an organised but dynamic sense of musicality that shapes his poetic theory and practice. This book is the first study to draw on music psychology and aesthetics to interpret the function and mechanism of Wordsworth’s aural structure and movement. Engaging with scholarship from the fields of literature and music, it defines Wordsworth’s poetry and the imagination through musical conceptions, and establishes various modes and forms of poetic listening as experiences of musical performance and appreciation. Each chapter explores a pair of musical abstractions – Lyricism and Musicality; Breath and Harmony; Repetition and Resonance; Expectation and Surprise; Rhythm and Dynamics; Rest and Silence. Musical Wordsworth will be of interest to students and researchers of Romantic poetry, long nineteenth-century literature, and music.Table of ContentsIntroduction: ‘That voice of unpretending harmony’1. Lyricism and Musicality 2. Breath and Harmony: Nature and the Romantic Imagination 3. Repetition and Resonance: The Soundscape of Memory 4. Expectation and Surprise: From Disorientation to Sublime Breakthrough 5. Rhythm and Dynamics: Listening to Urban Poetics 6. Rest and Silence: Voices of Collective Memorialisation Coda: ‘The music in my heart’
£95.00
Liverpool University Press Negotiations: Poems in their Contexts
Book SynopsisThis book, by the eminent poetry critic Neil Corcoran, examines the ways in which the work of significant modern Irish, British and American poets interacts with or ‘negotiates’ different contexts – historical, social, political, artistic and aesthetic. In Part 1 important work by David Jones, Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney and Bob Dylan is shown to negotiate poetic methods – both traditional and modernist – and also the work of major earlier writers to produce strikingly original new forms; and Derek Mahon’s prose is read in the light of these concerns. The books shows how, by negotiating in this way, their work engages profoundly with complex and sometimes terrible histories, including the First World War and the Northern Irish Troubles. Part 2 discusses the ways in which ‘ekphrastic’ work – poems which engage with visual art – by Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Graham, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath and Ciaran Carson negotiates comparable poetic and historical inheritances while also inventively responding to work by significant artists, notably Parmigianino, Poussin, de Chirico, Klee and members of the St Ives School. The book is a signal contribution to current critical debates about these poets, situating them in original or newly clarified contexts, and it offers exemplary close readings of noteworthy poems.Trade Review'Corcoran has long been one of our finest critics of modern and contemporary poetry. His blend of elegance and insight is consistently wonderful. This book contains essential reading on David Jones, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Graham, and many others. The way he enriches the poetry that he discusses is galvanising, and these essays are a hugely welcome shot in the arm.'- Alan Gillis, Professor of Modern Poetry, University of EdinburghTable of ContentsPrefacePart I. Negotiating Poems1. Spilled Bitterness: David Jones’s In Parenthesis between Myth and History 2. Robert Graves and Modern Poetry3. Irelands and Englands of the Mind: Seamus Heaney reading Shakespeare and Modern English Poetry4. Seamus Heaney and the Classics: Antaeus and Anchises 5. The Mahon Prose6. Beacon and Black Hole: Bob Dylan, Suze Rotolo and Two Songs of PartingPart II. Poems Negotiating Paintings 7. Our Infant Sight: An Elizabeth Bishop Collage8. W.S. Graham, Looking9. Doubting Ashbery 10. The Enigma of Arrival: Sylvia Plath reading de Chirico, Yeats and Klee11. Against Time: On Ciaran Carson’s Still Life
£110.00
Arc Humanities Press Tradition and Innovation in Old English Metre
Book Synopsis
£29.95
Arc Humanities Press Ancient, Medieval, and Premodern Korean Songs and
Book Synopsis
£104.00
Seagull Books London Ltd At the Burning Abyss – Experiencing the Georg
Book SynopsisFranz Fühmann’s magnum opus.At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry. Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car, left off, Fühmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology’s seductions—Nazism, then socialism—and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl’s enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl’s “unlivable life,” as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of “the whole human being: in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure.” In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its “courage to resist inhumanity.” At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency. Table of ContentsAt the Burning AbyssTranslator’s NoteNotes
£11.99
Seagull Books London Ltd Together Still
Book SynopsisYves Bonnefoy’s final poetic work, a collection of reflections about poetry, legacy, and life. The international community of letters mourned the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of France’s greatest poets of the last half-century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi.Together Still is his final poetic work, composed just months before his death. The book is nothing short of a literary testament, addressed to his wife, his daughter, his friends, and his readers throughout the world. In these pages, he ruminates on his legacy to future generations, his insistence on living in the present, his belief in the triumphant lessons of beauty, and, above all, his courageous identification of poetry with hope.Trade Review"Undoubtedly one of the major French poets of the last six decades. . . . Illuminating and deeply moving." * World Literature Today *Table of ContentsTOGETHER STILL URSA MAJOR What’s that Sound? And that, Again? Ursa Major Farther, Higher! Yes, Hello? You, Again! Star Seven THE BARE FOOT Inside, Outside? The Milky Way The Bare Foot, the Things Voices in the Treetops TOGETHER MUSIC AND MEMORY POEMS FOR TRUPHÉMUS The Room, the Garden A Café The Paintings Other Paintings Light, in an Empty Room BRIEFWEGE After the Fire Nisida Briefweg, in Warbende PERAMBULANS IN NOCTEM I In the Painter’s Studio The Translator’s Task The Walk in the Forest Hours in This Journal I Don’t Keep II Arms that Open At the Dawn of Time In the Other Trunk The Other Stairway The Low Door So Many Good Things! Perambulans in Noctem Bibliographic Notes In Memoriam: A Translator’s Note
£13.99
Liverpool University Press Poetry & Listening: The Noise of Lyric
Book SynopsisListening has always mattered in poetry, but how does poetry change when listening has been transformed? In Poetry & Listening: The Noise of Lyric, the field of sound studies, which has revolutionised research in contemporary music, is brought into dialogue with new lyric criticism. Examining poetry as mediated by performance, technology and translation, this book discovers how contemporary poetry has been re-energised by the influence of recorded sound and influenced by the creative methods that emerged with it. It offers an exploration of contemporary poetry’s acoustic contexts, moving beyond traditional analysis of poetic form to consider the social, political and ecological dimensions of a poem's sounds and silences. Through lucid engagement with a range of richly innovative English-language poetry from the UK and USA, it argues for the centrality of listening to a form of composition in which language not only represents sonic experience but is part of it. With reference to Jean-Luc Nancy’s distinction between hearing and listening, alongside other key theorists of sound and noise, it shows how poetry offers insights into sensory perception, and how it charts acoustic relationships between language and the environment.Table of Contents Listening to Lyric and Noise Song: Denise Riley's Lyric and Rock Echoes Noise: Sean Bonney's Resistance Acousmatics: Sounded/Silent Text in Caroline Bergvall's Drift Synaesthesia: Tuning in to Carol Watts and Mei-Mei Berssenburgge Echo: Claudia Rankine and Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo Improvisation: Tom Raworth's Intuition Performance: Listening Bodies Resounding: Tim Atkins, Peter Hughes and Jeff Hilson
£29.99
Liverpool University Press Shelley's Broken World: Fractured Materiality and
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the University English Book Prize 2022Shelley’s Broken World is a provocative and profound reassessment of Shelley’s poetic art and thought. Bysshe Inigo Coffey returns to a peculiarity of Shelley’s expressive repertoire first noticed by his Victorian readers and editors: his innovatory use of pauses, which registered as irregularities in ears untuned to his innovations. But his pauses are more than a quirk; various intermittences are at the centre of Shelley’s artistry and his thought. This book aims to transform the philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic contexts in which Shelley is positioned. It offers a ground-breaking analysis of his reading, and is the first study to refer to and include images of the unpublished ‘Marlow List’, a record of the books Shelley left behind him on his departure for Italy in 1818. Shelley’s prosody grew to articulate his sense that actuality is experienced as ruptured and fractured with gaps and limit-points. He shows us the weakness of the actual. As we approach the bicentenary of the poet’s death, Shelley’s Broken World provides an exciting new beginning for the study of a major Romantic poet, the history of materialism, and prosody.Trade Review'Shelley’s Broken World is a considerable achievement: intellectually adventurous, with many unexpected twists and turns in the argument and in the material. Coffey writes with distinctive eloquence. The range of reading is very impressive, but I especially like the confidence with which Coffey draws on the whole of Shelley's output, from the grandest central things to all manner of usually unconsidered texts. The close reading, tremendously insightful on pauses and rhymes, is a constant pleasure.'Kelvin Everest, University of Liverpool'A major contribution to the rich field of current Shelley studies, Shelley's Broken World offers a strongly original reading of the poet’s work and thought as embracing "intermittence" in varied ways. Through illuminating readings of less discussed poems (including "Rosalind and Helen" and "Ginevra") as well as more familiar ones (Alastor, Peter Bell the Third, Epipsychidion), Bysshe Coffey unearths a Shelley whose poetry inhabits gaps, interruptions and pauses. This thoughtful, ambitious monograph, the first critical study to engage with the recently discovered "Marlow list" (a record of his books the poet left behind on departing for Italy in 1818), establishes its voice persuasively, striking out its own path with assurance while engaging generously with criticism since Shelley's death and taking on, impressively, the complex history of his text.'Michael Rossington, Newcastle University'Shelley’s Broken World brilliantly rips up what we thought we knew about the poet, so as to start thinking anew. With wit, erudition and conviction, Coffey probes a series of generative "limit-points" to Shelley’s expression: manifest yet non-palpable sensuous phenomena that resist reductive materialisms; the revisions and deletion of his compositional process; the gaps and omissions in the poet’s personal library. Bringing together the otherwise cloistered fields of prosody, history of the book and manuscript studies, Coffey restores to us to the freshness, vitality and elusiveness that define Shelley’s achievement.'Ewan James Jones, University of Cambridge'Once begun, few readers will wish to pause their reading of Bysshe Inigo Coffey’s dazzling account of the "pauses of matter and life" in Shelley’s poetry. Displaying its subtlety, intelligence, and generosity from the outset, Shelley’s Broken World seeks to do justice to F.R. Leavis’s notorious strictures on Shelley – which, Coffey shows, Leavis in fact revised toward the end of his life – by arguing that "Shelley had a firm grasp upon the weakness of the actual". The book does a superlative job of bearing out this claim. Along the way, it illuminates pretty much the whole of Shelley’s life and work, as well as a host of other figures from Heraclitus to Harold Bloom. I struggle to think of another book on Shelley that combines such breadth of scholarship, subtlety of appreciation, and critical sophistication as are so abundantly in evidence here.'Ross Wilson, University of Cambridge'This richly-documented and engagingly-written – indeed, elegant – book is a highly valuable, even innovative, contribution to the interpretation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's writings, English Romantic poetry in general, and the influence on both of philosophical, scientific, and earlier literary works sometimes overlooked, many of which have never been connected to Shelley or Romanticism as convincingly as they are here. It is, in addition, distinctive in Shelley scholarship in focusing on his openings of spaces, interstices, and silences in his work and their intimations of a fractured world where there are gaps between parts of it, yet where those parts are still turning out towards emerging connections, like words on a page. Coffey shows powerfully how these openings suggest states of between-ness and in-distinction that really lie at the heart of human awareness and its experiences of the material world, even though those levels are usually repressed in everyday consciousness. Such "concealed life in pauses and breaks" (Coffey’s phrase) is here brought forward, first, in older philosophies of both materiality and prosody that now emerge as influential on Shelley in ways we have too long ignored and, second, in his brilliant uses of the performative aspects of poems to call attention to moments of suspended animation caught between the dissolution and the renewal of thought, matter, and their relationships with each other. This process leads throughout to perceptive close readings of selected Shelley poems that are among the most revealing we now have, ones that general readers, students, and their teachers can apply to other works by him – and by some contemporaries and successors – not directly studied in this account. It is a pleasure to recommend an academic study that is at once a stylish "good read" and a provocative challenge for us all to examine Shelley the poet more carefully while, at the same time, learning how he expanded the possibilities of poetry in ways we have not understood until now.'Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona'Shelley’s Broken World is an exhilarating, original contribution to the study of Shelley’s poetry and poetics. It reads a series of passages from such seemingly disparate poems as Alastor, Epipsychidion, and the Triumph of Life with remarkable assurance and deft sensitivity to how the poetry is performed by and in the reader. Its goal is not so much to provide a reading of a particular poem as a whole, as to demonstrate how "various intermittences" – "poetic, cognitive, spiritual, bodily" – are a hallmark of Shelley’s poetic practice, and constitute a subject deeply in need of further understanding. These intermittences appear in both Shelley’s prosody itself and the thematics involving sleep, trance, madness, and death that the verse embodies and explores. Along the way, there are some eye-opening close readings. The splendid discussion of the title and opening two lines of Epipsychidion is in itself a revelation.'Neil Fraistat, University of Maryland'A fine study of Shelley’s airy arts of breath and pause, as diverting as it is scholarly. Bysshe Inigo Coffey has many new things to say about the poet’s extensive reading and the way it helped shape many of his greatest writings, and he traces the rich philosophical, religious, and scientific resonances of the poetry with great critical grace. Sympathetic and sharp-eyed, in Shelley’s Broken World Coffey offers a deeply informed and stylishly written account of the many ways that Shelley’s complex genius sought, in his own words "something beyond the present & tangible object".'Seamus Perry, University of Oxford'Percy Bysshe Shelley has long been known by poetry cognoscenti as the Marmite of poets. Carlyle (whom I hate) called him "Weak in genius, weak in character (for these two always go together); a poor thin, spasmodic, hectic, shrill and pallid being" and Charles Kingsley, a founder of Muscular Christianity, compared "the increase of Shelley-reading in Britain in the 1850s to another growing female addiction, the secret sipping of eau-de-cologne". Bysshe Inigo Coffey is without doubt an admirer, who sees Shelley’s poetic intelligence and sensuous experience in harmony like no other with an especially endearing "grasp upon the weakness of the actual". Through new research in the "Marlow List" Coffey meticulously places Shelley in his philosophical and scientific milieux, tracing Shelley’s reading in Kant and Rousseau as well as in medicine, geophysics, astronomy, anatomy and the life sciences. This is a work of scholarly elegance as well as depth on matters of pointing and crux, of "great, last fragments", through the full range of Shelley’s poetry but especially Alastor, Peter Bell the Third, and Epipsychidion.' Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter'This book explores inter alia how the dissolution of the boundary between mind and matter is expressed by Shelley in his dissolution of the boundary between philosophy and poetry. In this he resembles Lucretius, one of numerous poetic, scientific, and philosophical influences on Shelley presented by Coffey with rigorous scholarship. The eloquent passion of his book leaves us with the sense that Shelley was grappling with fundamental problems, and their solutions through poetic imagination, that - even if they no longer concern us - certainly should do.'Richard Seaford, University of Exeter'Shelley’s Broken World is a piercingly insightful and gracefully written book that both widens and sharpens our understanding of the poet’s intellectual and poetic engagement with the world. Bysshe Coffey has that rare talent: an ability to combine rigorous historical research with a sensitive, finely tuned ear for poetry. In this sophisticated study, Coffey shows how the pauses, fractures, absences, and breaks in Shelley’s canon are momentous. These textual spaces reflect and express the poet's thinking about politics, society, and human life in general. This book sets new standards in Shelley studies and indeed, Romantic studies.'Corinna Wagner, University of Exeter'Shelley was a polymath, and in Shelley’s Broken World Coffey provides one of the best attempts to comprehend the range, sophistication, and meaning of the poet’s mind. Coffey’s mastery of Shelley’s poetry and its contexts is remarkable, and, more importantly, he provides brilliant readings of how the two interact. The European literature and thought that inform poems such as Alastor and Epipsychidion are thoroughly explored, but Coffey is also adept at close readings which tease out Shelley’s sense of absence and vacancy enacted by form and metre. It is refreshing that Coffey manages to take the philosophical implications for any study of materiality seriously without succumbing to jargon or theoretical wandering. Furthermore, his book is part of a tradition, and he engages on every page with Shelley’s best critics and editors, while maintaining a confident and unique critical voice.'Will Bowers, Queen Mary University of London'This study should transform our understanding of Shelley’s work. Coffey writes like an angel, and he has an ear for the detailed nuances of metre and rhythm that is rare indeed; better still, he combines this gift with a painstaking archival scholarship and a deeply learned appreciation of the intellectual milieu in which Shelley worked.'Tim Kendall, University of Exeter'Not only is [this] a work of remarkable scholarship, demonstrating meticulous research and close reading and containing numerous archival revelations that will transform our understanding of Shelley, it is also an intense labour of love that realises the continuing vitality of Shelley’s poetry and philosophy for the activity of thinking and living. [...] It is an excellent conclusion to an excellent book. Characterized by an intensity and clarity of argument, a sensitivity for both the historical and the poetical, and perhaps above all a principled defence of the simultaneous weakness and power of thought, Shelley’s Broken World brings to life anew ‘the frail pauses of this simple strain’ (Shelley, Alastor).Robert Scott, The Review of English Studies'Bysshe Coffey’s Shelley’s Broken World is a broad-ranging study: one part old-fashioned history of ideas; one part monograph on Shelley’s heretofore underappreciated practice of bringing much of his verse to life within the pauses and “limit-points” of sensory perception, cognition, and prosody. [...] Coffey’s book will influence and enrich our understanding of Shelley’s achievement for a long time.'Michael J. Neth, Romantic Circles'This work is done with assurance by Coffey, in terms of Shelley’s relation to contemporaneous, and earlier, science, philosophy, and poetic repertoires. [...] This convivial aspect holds in a professional and not just thematic sense, as Coffey works closely within the Shelley editorial circle. [...] The provenance of the many insights in Shelley’s Broken World is impressively evidence-based. Coffey has an archival ace in the hole [...] able to pursue surprising investigations, and to shore up the grounds of several internal questions long held in Shelley Studies. At the same time, Coffey is a giftedly creative critic who can leap to his insights straight off. [...] Shelley’s Broken World’s greatest strengths are its professional content and its style, aligning scholarly argument to a temperament that redeems belles lettres through meticulous research.' Eric Lindstrom, The BARS Review‘Shelleyans will find much to enjoy and think over in Shelley’s Broken World. Coffey has a deep knowledge of Shelley’s corpus and the history of its reception and editing, and he shares this knowledge in an engaging prose style. He writes on neglected works, recounts editors’ debates about pointing, and traces obscure lines of thought weaving through the Marlow List with unpretentious delight. His close readings are thoughtful and judicious… gaps are full of possibilities.’ Steve Tedeschi, Wordsworth Circle‘Coffey shows how profoundly Shelley’s work engages with the philosophical, scientific, artistic, and cultural climate of the nineteenth century. Scholarly, thoughtful, and finely researched, Shelley’s Broken World presents fresh and invigorating readings of Shelley’s poems, employing hitherto unseen archive material. Elegantly written, this research monograph is an impressive achievement.’ University English Book Prize 2022Table of ContentsIntroduction1. Matter in the Margins2. Dynamics and Statics3. Their Own Eternity4. Intermitted Song: Alastor5. Kant, Purity, and the Devil: Peter Bell the Third6. Weak Verse: EpipsychidionCoda. The Broken World
£29.99
Liverpool University Press Hollow Palaces: An Anthology of Modern Country
Book SynopsisThe ‘country house poem’ was born in the seventeenth century as a fruitful way of flattering potential patrons. But the genre’s popularity faded – ironically, just as ‘country house society’ was emerging. It was only when the power and influence of the landed classes had all but ebbed away that poets returned to the theme, attracted perhaps by the buildings’ irresistible dereliction, but equally by their often very personal histories. This is the first complete anthology of modern country house poems, and it shows just how far (as Simon Jenkins points out in his Foreword) poems can ‘penetrate the souls of buildings’. Over 160 distinguished poets representing a diversity of class, race, gender, and generation offer fascinating perspectives on stately exteriors and interiors, gardens both wild and cultivated, crumbling ruins and the extraordinary secrets they hide. There are voices of all kinds, whether it’s Edith Sitwell recreating her childhood, W. B. Yeats and Wendy Cope pondering Lissadell, or Simon Armitage’s labourer confronting the Lady who’s ‘got the lot’. We hear from noble landowners and loyal (or rebellious) servants, and from many an inquisitive day-tripper. The book’s dominant note is elegiac, yet comedy, satire, even strains of Gothic can be heard among these potent reflections. Hollow Palaces reminds us how poets can often be the most perceptive of guides to radical changes in society. The book is illustrated by Rosie Greening.
£29.99
Liverpool University Press Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry:
Book SynopsisEbook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative. The years following the Second World War saw an exponential increase in the translation of contemporary foreign poetry in Italy. The practice was at its most prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s, when publishing houses across the board almost doubled the number of foreign poetry titles in their catalogues. This remarkable phenomenon, however, has received scant critical attention, which has been limited to an aesthetic perspective. Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field, 1939–1977 is one of the first studies to examine the sociological significance of publishing poetry translations. Drawing on untapped archival materials, it investigates from an interdisciplinary perspective the processes and products of poetry translation, and how they impacted on publishing, cultural, literary, and political dynamics in Italy. It explores the internal reconfiguration of Italian culture, and how Italy sought to position itself in the world, without neglecting the contradictions of national and transnational cultural networks and movements. The book argues that translation was a means to modify power relationships in the field of poetry publishing and the contemporary literary arena; this ultimately changed the map of Italian cultural production and its transnational networks, thus anticipating the further developments provoked by globalisation in the 1980s.Trade Review"An insightful analysis of the way that the translation of foreign poetry helped shape the Italian publishing industry and its power dynamics – enormously well-researched and highly readable."Liz Wren-Owens, Cardiff UniversityTable of ContentsINTRODUCTIONPublishing and Poetry Translation: A Methodological IntroductionCHAPTER 1Publishing, culture, and poetry: a field investigationCHAPTER 2Editors, Habitus and Translation: publishing strategies in poetry translationCHAPTER 3Contemporary foreign poetry anthologies for new cultural and publishing horizonsCHAPTER 4Towards Globalisation, by a way of conclusionAppendix 1Appendix 2Works Cited
£110.00
Liverpool University Press Don Paterson
Book SynopsisDon Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain's major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed close readings of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poetry, it presents Paterson as a major lyric poet.Table of ContentsBiographical OutlinePrologue1. For the Hell of It: Nil Nil (1993)2. Which Man I Am: God's Gift to Women (1997)3. Not Your Name, Not Mine: The Eyes (1999)4. Shrewd Obliquity of Speech: Landing Light (2003)5. Breath, You Invisible Poem: Orpheus (2006)6. None of This Matters: Rain (2009)Coda: 40 Sonnets (2015) and Zonal (2020)
£18.99
Liverpool University Press Educating the Romantic Poets: Life and Learning
Book SynopsisEducating the Romantic Poets: Life and Learning in the Anglo-Classical Academy, 1770-1850 explores how the public and endowed grammar schools and the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge trained some of the most important writers, critics, and public figures of the Romantic period. These institutions are recognized here as intentional partners and are discussed collectively as the “Anglo-classical academy”. The book shows how they not only schooled students in “classics, maths, and divinity” but also in accepted social behaviours, cultural values, political beliefs, and literary tastes. In so doing, this academy gave shape to the literature and spirit of the age. By discussing the schools and the universities together and by focusing upon pedagogies and daily life as well as the texts and topics studied, this book shows as no other has done how writers and readers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries became such fluent linguists, skilled prosodists, and perceptive critics. As each chapter explores and comments upon the relational, intellectual, and cultural aspects of the Anglo-classical educational experience, it directs readers’ attention to the ways in which this information can be used to reread texts, reassess certain Romantics’ literary careers, and launch new lines of research.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction England’s Public and Grammar Schools: First Lessons England’s Public and Grammar Schools: Lessons in Grammar, Memory, and Composition England’s Public and Grammar Schools: Lessons in Classical Literature, Rhetoric, Oratory, and Composition Training Religious Instruction and Worship in the Anglo-Classical Academy Oxford and Cambridge in the Romantic Period: “Operose ignorance” or “Good habits, and the principles of virtue and wisdom”? University Life The Curriculum of the English “Confessional” University: Heroes, Shepherds, and “Holding acquaintance with the stars" Pedagogies of Oxford and Cambridge in the Georgian Period The Educators of Oxford and Cambridge in the Georgian Period Leadership at Oxford and Cambridge Conclusions
£110.00
Liverpool University Press Wallace Stevens In Theory
Book SynopsisThe modernist poetry of Wallace Stevens is replete with moments of theorizing. Stevens regarded poetry as an abstract medium through which to think about and theorize not only philosophical concepts like metaphor and reality, but also a unifying thesis about the nature of poetry itself. At the same time, literary theorists and philosophers have often turned to Stevens as a canonical reference point and influence. In the centenary year of Wallace Stevens’s first collection Harmonium (1923), this collection asks what it means to theorize with Stevens today. Through a range of critical and theoretical perspectives, this book seeks to describe the myriad kinds of thinking sponsored by Stevens’s poetry and explores how contemporary literary theory might be invigorated through readings of Stevens.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Pure Good of Theory Thomas Gould and Ian Tan I Reading Stevens Theorizing Almost Successfully Lisa M. Steinman The Reader In/Of Stevens Ariane Mildenberg The Event in Stevens as Poetic Justification: Alain Badiou, Poetic Performativity and the Implied Reader Ian Tan II Theory and Form Stevens’s Queer Ecologies Bart Eeckhout The Pursuits of Philosophy and the Sounds of Poetry: Stevens and Heidegger Wit Pietrzak Stevens, Adorno and the Worldly Poetics of Lyric Unworlding Zachary Tavlin III Experience and Affect Wider Than the Sky: Stevens, Consciousness and the Incipient Cosmos Kathryn Mudgett What Stevens’s Poetry can offer to Theorists of Consciousness Charles Altieri ‘Emotionally We Arrive all the Time’: Stevens and Affect Theory Marta Figlerowicz IV Theology and Post-Theology From Philosophy to Theology: Stevens’s Angel and the Real Stephen Sicari Two Cathedrals: Stevens and George Santayana's Sonnet Exchange Kelly MacPhail The The: Stevens’s Neighborliness Thomas Gould V Postures and Dispositions ‘A war between the mind and the sky’: Fictions, Fools, and the Consequences of Empire Johanna Skibsrud Damned Universal Cock: Stevens’s Ecstatic Present Rachel Trousdale A Collect of Style Krzysztof Ziarek
£110.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Speaking German Musically Poetic Recitation in
Book SynopsisShows how poetic recitation and the interweaving of music and poetry contributed to the advent of a German identity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.The art of reciting a text out loud, known as Vortragskunst, be it in a private circle or in a concert hall, originated in German-speaking countries in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had become a well-established practice subjected to an artistic blossoming unparalleled in the rest of Europe.In this book Jacqueline Waeber explains and examines how and why this happened, focusing on the origins of poetic recitation and its development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period essential to the development of modern German literature and theatre, bookended by the two main figures who contributed to the theoretical and aesthetical tenets of poetic recitation, the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Poetic recitation quickly gained attraction for the Lied and the musical melodrama, both musical genres that were driven by a search for new declamatory styles. As a result, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the frequent addition of a musical accompaniment. As the book shows, this intertwining of music and poetry made a huge contribution to the advent of German identity through the reappraisal of its language.
£117.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Companion to the Middle English Lyric
Book SynopsisComprehensive survey of the Middle English lyric, one of the most important forms of medieval literature. Winner of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award The Middle English lyric occupies a place of considerable importance in the history of English literature. Here, for the first time in English, are found many features of formal and thematic importance: they include rhyme scheme, stanzaic form, the carol genre, love poetry in the manner of the troubadour poets, and devotional poems focusing on the love, suffering and compassion of Christ and theVirgin Mary. The essays in this volume aim to provide both background information on and new assessments of the lyric. By treating Middle English lyrics chapter by chapter according to their kinds - poems dealing with love, with religious devotion, with moral, political and popular themes, and those associated with preaching - it provides the awareness of their characteristic cultural contexts and literary modalities necessary for an informed critical reading. Full account is taken of the scholarship upon which our knowledge of these lyrics rests, especially the outstanding contributions of the last few decades and such recent insights as those of gender criticism. Also included are detailed discussions of the valuable information afforded by the widely varying manuscript contexts in which Middle English lyrics survive and of the diverse issues involved in editing these texts. Separate chapters are devotedto the carol, which came to prominence in the fifteenth century, and to Middle Scots lyrics which, at the end of the Middle English lyric tradition, present some sophisticated productions of an entirely new order. Contributors: Julia Boffey, Thomas G. Duncan, John Scattergood, Vincent Gillespie, Christiania Whitehead, Douglas Gray, Karl Reichl, Thorlac Turville-Petre, Alan J. Fletcher, Bernard O'Donoghue, Sarah Stanbury and Alasdair A. MacDonald. THOMAS G. DUNCAN is Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of St AndrewsTrade ReviewA very successful collection of articles on the shorter poems of medieval England and Scotland. * ARCHIV *An important collection. [...] The essays in this collection are of great significance, covering everything from manuscript context to political approaches to Middle Scots lyrics. * THE YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES *This comprehensive companion is a welcome resource, providing a variety of approaches and a wealth of examples. * ECONOMIA *An expertly assembled and immaculately produced volume which will not be easily surpassed as an introduction to this important field. * ANGLIA *A most welcome addition to studies of the medieval lyric. Admirably combines informative and precisely detailed contextual material with critically acute and original readings. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Proves a most useful guide to the Middle English lyric and its modern scholarship. * ENGLISH STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Thomas G. Duncan Middle English Lyrics: Metre and Editorial Practice - Thomas G. Duncan The love lyric before Chaucer - John Scattergood Moral and Penitential Lyrics - Vincent Gillespie Middle English Religious Lyrics - Christiania Whitehead Middle English Courtly Lyrics: Chaucer to Henry VIII - D Gray The Middle English Carol - Karl Reichl Political Lyrics - Thorlac Turville-Petre The Lyric in the Sermon - Alan J Fletcher 'Cuius Contrarium': Middle English Popular Lyrics - Bernard O'Donoghue Gender and Voice in Middle English Religious Lyrics - Sarah Stanbury Lyrics in Middle Scots -
£80.07
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Works of Thomas Traherne II: Commentaries of
Book SynopsisTraherne's voice can be heard as never before. THE TABLET Thomas Traherne [1637? - 1674], a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were discovered. There have beensince miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings. The Works of Thomas Traherne brings together all of Traherne's extant works in a definitive, printed edition for the first time. It will include both his published and unpublished works, and his notebooks, presenting them insofar as possible by manuscript, giving due attention to their physical aspects and to their integrity as manuscript books. Volumes II and III make available the Commentaries of Heaven, preserved in one manuscript held at the British Library. Organised topically, it was intended to cover the whole of the alphabet but extends only through `A' and part of `B', with 95prose articles altogether. It possesses the characteristics of a commonplace book, encyclopaedia and dictionary, and contains poetry, meditations, philosophical discourse, and polemic. The unusual range of subjects treated, from `Abhorrence' to `Ant', `Aristotle' to `Atom', shows Traherne to be an imaginative and compelling writer in his approach to Christian theology, while maintaining both his integrity and orthodoxy as a priest.Trade ReviewThe Commentaries is a huge work that is absolutely essential for students and scholars of Traherne. This is the first time it has been published in its entirety, and its publication will undoubtedly spark new explorations into Traherne's work. [...] Ross's project as a whole is an exciting prospect for Traherne scholars, but the publication of the Commentaries alone is a monumental achievement and one that will be of tremendous significance. * SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction List of Topics Commentaries of Heaven Textual Emendations Appendices Glossary
£120.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and
Book SynopsisAn examination of the ways in which late medieval lyric poetry can be seen to engage with contemporary medical theory. This book argues that late medieval love poets, from Petrarch to Machaut and Charles d'Orléans, exploit scientific models as a broad framework within which to redefine the limits of the lyric subject and his body. Just as humoraltheory depends upon principles of likes and contraries in order to heal, poetry makes possible a parallel therapeutic system in which verbal oppositions and substitutions counter or rewrite received medical wisdom. The specific case of blindness, a disability that according to the theories of love that predominated in the late medieval West foreclosed the possibility of love, serves as a laboratory in which to explore poets' circumvention of the logical limits of contemporary medical theory. Reclaiming the power of remedy from physicians, these late medieval French and Italian poets prompt us to rethink not only the relationship between scientific and literary authority at the close of the middle ages, but, more broadly speaking, the very notion of therapy. Julie Singer is Assistant Professor of French at Washington University, St Louis.Trade ReviewAn ambitious volume, meticulously researched and bringing together a wealth of material. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Singer's study is an admirable blend of philology, cultural history, and disability studies. It is well researched and has the unusual merit of giving almost equivalent space to both Italian and French texts and criticism. * SPECULUM *[M]eticulously researched and bringing together a wealth of material. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction: On Rhetoric and Remedy The Love-Imprint Medical Blindness, Rhetorical Insight Irony, or the Therapeutics of Contraries Metaphor as Experimental Medicine Metonymy and Prosthesis Blindfold Synecdoche Epilogue. Just Words Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd John Gower, Poetry and Propaganda in
Book SynopsisJohn Gower's works examined as part of a tradition of "official" writings on behalf of the Crown. John Gower has been criticised for composing verse propaganda for the English state, in support of the regime of Henry IV, at the end of his distinguished career. However, as the author of this book shows, using evidence from Gower's English, French and Latin poems alongside contemporary state papers, pamphlet-literature, and other historical prose, Gower was not the only medieval writer to be so employed in serving a monarchy's goals. Professor Carlson also argues that Gower's late poetry is the apotheosis of the fourteenth-century tradition of state-official writing which lay at the origin of the literary Renaissance in Ricardian and Lancastrian England. David Carlsonis Professor in the Department of English, University of Ottawa.Trade Review2013 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title * . *David Carlson has written a book that contributes enormously to our knowledge of the dynamics of late-medieval literary patronage in general and to our understanding of John Gower's relationship to Richard II and Henry IV in particular. In its detailed exposition of difficult verse texts it stands as a model for literary scholars, and in its nuanced elucidation of contemporary responses to political events (especially the Lancastrian usurpation), it offers some valuable lessons for the historian as well. * SPECULUM *An important book for everyone interested in political writing - argued, as one would expect from Carson, on the basis of a wealth of detail which is submitted to skeptical scrutiny. * MEDIUM AEVUM *A crucial addition to the history of ways in which literary production and politics were interconnected in fourteenth-century England. * PARERGON *A game-changing study. ... An outstanding inquiry, blending source study, political criticism, and sensitive analyses. ... Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Gower in History Official Verse: The Sources and Problems of Evidence The State Propaganda Occasions of State and Propagandistic Verse in Mid-Century Walter Peterborough's Victoria belli in Hispania [1367] and its Official Source Compulsion in Richard Maidstone's Concordia [1392] Official Writing at the Lancastrian Advent English Poetry in Late Summer 1399 The Cronica tripertita and its Official Source Gower after the Revolution: Client and Critic Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry
Book SynopsisOffers an entirely new way of interpreting and examining Anglo-Saxon texts, via theories derived from cognitive studies. A major, thoughtful study, applying new and serious interpretative and critical perspectives to a central range of Old English poetry. Professor John Hines, Cardiff University Cognitive approaches to literature offernew and exciting ways of interpreting literature and mentalities, by bringing ideas and methodologies from Cognitive Science into the analysis of literature and culture. While these approaches are of particular value in relation to understanding the texts of remote societies, they have to date made very little impact on Anglo-Saxon Studies. This book therefore acts as a pioneer, mapping out the new field, explaining its relevance to Old English Literary Studies, and demonstrating in practice its application to a range of key vernacular poetic texts, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, and poems from the Exeter Book. Adapting key ideas from three related fields - Cognitive Literary/Cultural Studies, Cognitive Poetics, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory - in conjunction with more familiar models, derived from Literary Analysis, Stylistics, and Historical Linguistics, allows several new ways of thinking about Old English literature to emerge. It permits a systematic means of examining and accounting for the conceptual structures that underpin Anglo-Saxon poetics, as well as fuller explorations, at the level of mental processing, of the workings of literary language in context. The result is a set of approaches to interpreting Anglo-Saxon textuality, through detailed studies of the concepts, mental schemas, and associative logic implied in and triggeredby the evocative language and meaning structures of surviving works. ANTONINA HARBUS is Professor in the Department of English at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.Trade ReviewOffers fresh approaches to understanding the contemporary reception of Anglo-Saxon poetry and modern encounters with these texts. * YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES *Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry marks an ambitious foray by Anglo-Saxonist Antonina Harbus into new realms of analysis afforded by the 'cognitive approaches' of her title. It will be of particular interest to those who want to understand the implications of current trends in literary study to embrace the terms and ideas of cognitive science. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Conceptual Metaphors Conceptual Blending Text World Theory Cognitive Cultural Studies Anglo-Saxon Perspectives on Autobiographical Memory and the Self Cognitive Approaches to the History of Emotions and the Emotional Dynamic of Literature Conclusion Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas
Book SynopsisAn examination of how greatly the sagas and other literature of Iceland shaped the poems of William Morris. The work of William Morris (1834-1896) was hugely influenced by the medieval sagas and poetry of Iceland; in particular, they inspired his long poems "The Lovers of Gudrun" and Sigurd the Volsung. Between 1868 and 1876, Morris not only translated several major sagas into English for the first time with his collaborator the Icelander Eiríkur Magnússon (1833-1913) but he also travelled on horseback twice across the Icelandic interior, journeys which led him through the best known of the saga sites. By looking closely at his translations of the sagas and the texts on which he based them, the journals of his travels in Iceland, and his saga-inspired long poems and lyric poetry, this book shows how Morris conceived a unique ideal of heroism through engaging with Icelandic literature. It shows the sagas and poetry of Iceland as crucial in shaping his view of the best life a man could live and spurring him on in the subsequent passions on which much of his legacy rests. IAN FELCE gained his PhD from Cambridge University.Trade ReviewFelce gives a nuanced and persuasive account of Morris' personal development toward atheism and socialism through his reading and rewriting of medieval Icelandic literature. * MEDIEVALLY SPEAKING *Felce's immaculate introductory account of Old Norse saga literature should be required reading for all aspiring Morris scholars. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Morris contributed immensely to the knowledge and dissemination of the literature and culture of medieval Iceland, restoring to England, he believed, its northern heritage, a contribution Felce succeeds in explaining with scholarly detail, sensitive argument, cogent examples, and wide references to previous scholarship. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *Felce makes a strong case that during his first 'Norse period', Morris developed via his encounters with Norse literature an ideal of heroism and secular endurance and action that profoundly affected his subsequent life and social engagement. * ENGLISH *Table of ContentsIntroduction 'The Lovers of Gudrun' and the Crisis of the Grail Quest The Sagas of Icelanders and the Transmutation of Shame Grettir the Strong and the Courage of Incapacity Heimskringla, Literalness and the Power of Craft Sigurd the Volsung and the Fulfilment of the Deedful Measure The Unnameable Glory and the Fictional World Conclusion Bibliography Index
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd George Lauder (1603-1670): Life and Writings
Book SynopsisFirst full study and edition of the works of George Lauder, "the poet whom Scotland forgot". The Scottish poet George Lauder began as a "university wit", by imitating anti-papal satires popular in the Italian Renaissance. He set off for London as a young man, looking for patronage, but instead became an officer in the army, seeing service in France, the Low Countries, Germany, Denmark and Sweden -- an experience which provides the backdrop to the poetry of his mature years. At the Restoration he wrote a lengthy poem of advice to Charles II, and his final masterwork was a poetic conflation of the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ. Lauder was influenced by Ben Jonson, William Drummond, and by the Metaphysical and the Caroline styles. His personal library testifies to his wide range of interests, and to his acquaintance with European literature in neo-Latin and other languages. This volume traces Lauder's career, collects all his surviving verse (presented with full notes and commentary), and examines his interactions with certain of the greatest intellectuals of the Dutch Golden Age. Lauder was a British patriot and a loyal supporter of the House of Orange; above all, however, he is the author of a unique corpus of highly accomplished poetry. ALASDAIR A. MACDONALD is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature of the Middle Ages, University of Groningen, Netherlands.Table of ContentsGeorge Lauder: Scoto-British European Cultural contexts Arms and the man Lauder as poet Lauder's library George Lauder: the Man and his Art Texts The poetic corpus Treatment of texts Poems by Lauder Poems to Lauder Lauder Correspondence Commentary to poems by Lauder Bibliography
£95.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors,
Book SynopsisFirst full-length study of birds and their metamorphoses as treated in a wide range of medieval poetry, from the Anglo-Saxons to Chaucer and Gower. Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people's lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems -- The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of his chosen poems. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds. MICHAEL J. WARREN is currently Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway University, where he gained his PhD.Trade ReviewIn his soaring exploration of the avian, Warren urges us to look beyond the human preoccupations of medieval poetry to see how writers have persistently attempted to...bridge the gap between human and bird, at least temporarily, by inviting us to listen more closely to the melody those 'smale foweles' make all around us. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Warren's handling of medieval material in a way that reminds us of both the innate value of the species we run the risk of destroying and the dangers of human exceptionalism is a welcome and, moreover, a significant contribution to the field. * MEDIUM ÆVUM *[I]t is not a bad thing for a book to leave readers wanting more when the readings are this perspicacious. ...Birds in Middle English Poetry contributes significantly to ecocritical, literary, and medieval studies. It shows that asking new questions of familiar texts reveals exciting insights into how medieval people understood their natural environment and how allegory operates. It invites us to remember the dynamic importance of birds in the Anthropocene and concludes with a generous glossary of bird names that will facilitate further study. * STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER *Combining ornithological and literary history, this book is an important contribution to environmental history and ecocriticism, unpacking the complex relationships between human and other creatures and their shared environments. * PARERGON *Birds in Medieval English Poetry is a valiant attempt at focussing exclusively on the birds and their special role within the medieval discourse on animals and recommended reading for all interested in matters animal. * ANGLIA *[B]y thinking with actual birds-by suggesting that the birds in these texts might be every bit as real and variable as the human characters-Warren complicates our sense of both the real and the textual. Each is ambiguous, paradoxical, and strange, each interacting unpredictably to tell us something new about the shared world of humans and birds. * Speculum *Table of ContentsIntroduction Native Foreigners: Migrating Seabirds and the Pelagic Soul in The Seafarer Avian Pedagogies: Wondering with Birds in the Exeter Book Riddles A Bird's Worth: Mis-Representing Owls in The Owl and the Nightingale 'Kek Kek': Translating Birds in The Parliament of Fowls Birds' Form: Enabling Desire and Identities in Confessio Amantis Epilogue Glossary: Old and Middle English bird names Bibliography
£75.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Critical Companion to John Skelton
Book SynopsisIntroduces Skelton and his work to readers unfamiliar with the poet, gathers together the vibrant strands of existing research, and opens up new avenues for future studies. John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences. This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen; JOHN SCATTERGOOD is Professor (Emeritus) of Medieval and Renaissance English at Trinity College, Dublin. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton,A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg WaiteTrade ReviewOverall, the collection is a rigorous and generous portrait of a man whose creative vernacularizing force was instrumental in both defying and moulding his own time. -- PARERGONThe book does an excellent job of situating Skelton in his literary, political, and cultural milieus. The essays are concise and accessible, and will serve as excellent springboards for more detailed study. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *This volume provides a much needed critical introduction to the important early Tudor poet John Skelton. * MEDIUM AEVUM *the chapters here strike an excellent balance between providing security, in the form of contextual scaffolding, and providing sharper edges, in the form of fresh or vivid accounts of how to understand Skelton's work. * CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY *Skelton's myriad contradictions often frustrate rather than engage readers, so this concise but rewarding Critical Companion, featuring contributions from a dozen heavyweight scholars, sheds welcome light on this perplexing writer's perplexing paradoxes. The volume elucidates Skelton's quirks and peculiarities by locating him squarely in the intellectual climate that informs his writing. Cogency, polish, and organizing design-virtues rarely associated with Skelton-are the signature characteristics of this collection, an indispensable volume for any reader of Skelton. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Sebastian Sobecki John Skelton (?1460-1529): A Life in Writing - John Scattergood Religion - Thomas Betteridge Law and Politics - Sebastian Sobecki Classical Literature - John Scattergood Humanism - David R. Carlson Satires and Invectives - John A. Burrow Lyrics and Short Poems - Julia Boffey Skelton's Voice and Performance - Elisabeth Dutton Literary Tradition - Jane Griffiths Skelton and the English Language - Greg Waite Skelton's English Works in Manuscripts and Print - Carol Meale Skelton's English Canon - A S G Edwards Reception and Afterlife - Helen Cooper A Skelton Bibliography - Nadine Kuipers
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd François Villon in English Poetry: Translation
Book SynopsisResponses from the nineteenth century onwards to the medieval French poet. Medieval Paris' paradigmatic poet, François Villon, has long captured the imaginations of creative writers. Attracted by his beguilingly pseudo-autobiographical literary persona and a body of work that moves seamlessly between bawdy humour, bitterness, devotion, and regret, Villon's heirs have been many and varied. A veritable "poet's poet", his oeuvre has appealed to fellow versifiers in particular, providing a rich source for translation and imitation. This book explores creative responses to Villon by British and North American poets, focusing on translations and imitations of his work by Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, and Robert Lowell. They are presented as exemplary of the greater trend of rendering Villon into English, transporting the reader from the first verse translations of his work in the nineteenth century, to post-modern adaptations and parodies ofVillon in the twentieth. By concentrating on the manner in which individual poets have reacted to Villon, and to one another, the study unravels multiple layers of poetic relations. It argues that the relationships that exist between the translated or imitated texts are collaborative as much as they are competitive, establishing a canon of Villon in English poetry whose allusions are not only to the French source, but to the parallel corpus of English translations and imitations. CLAIRE PASCOLINI-CAMPBELL holds degrees in medieval and comparative literatures from the University of St Andrews and University College London.Trade ReviewBy concentrating on the manner in which individual poets have reacted to Villon, and to one another, the study unravels multiple layers of poetic relations. * CHOICE *François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence is a taut, enticing, and precise study with appeal to readers interested not only in the reception of medieval literature, but also in poetry and poetics, Translation Studies, and Comparative Literature. * TRANSLATION AND LITERATURE *Chapter 4 addresses Pound, and especially his opera, Le Testament de Villon: it is a pleasure, to see attention paid to a work so little known, and Pascolini-Campbell's analysis is illuminating. * FRENCH STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction Then and Now: The Legend of Villon in the Middle Ages and in Modernity Villon and Swinburne: Finding and Singing Villon Villon and Rossetti: Poetics of Strangeness Villon and Pound: Modernity and the 'Mediaeval Dream' Villon and Bunting: Prison-Writing and Parody Villon and Lowell: Imitation and the Visible Translator Conclusion Appendices Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure: A
Book SynopsisFirst English translation of an important twelfth-century romance, giving an account of the Trojan war and its consequences. Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, dating to around 1165, is, along with the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d'Eneas, one of the three "romances of antiquity" (romans d'antiquité). These romances launched the plots, themes and structures of the genre, then blossoming in the hands of authors such as Chrétien de Troyes. As an account of the Trojan War, Benoît's work is of necessity a poem about war and its causes, how it was fought and what its consequences were for the combatants. But the author's choice of the octosyllabic rhyming couplet, his fondness for description, his ability to recount the intensity of personal struggles, and above all his fascination with the trials and tribulations of Love, which affect some of the work's most prominent warriors (among them Paris and his love for Helen, and Troilus and his love for Briseida), all combine to fashion this romance - in which events from long ago are presented as a reflection of the poet's own feudal and courtly worlds. This translation, the first into English, aims to bring the poem and the author to a wider audience. It is accompanied by an introduction and notes.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award * . *[A] clear and accessible translation of Benoît's twelfth-century Roman de Troie that will serve as the standard English-language version of the medieval French text for the foreseeable future. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *The translators, eminent medievalists both, have crafted a compelling narrative that is scrupulously faithful to the original and perhaps even more vivid and powerful . . . The translators' expertise is evident in every component of the book-not only their translation, but also the dense introduction. Essential. * CHOICE *
£35.87
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Winner and Waster and its Contexts: Chivalry, Law
Book SynopsisFirst recent full-length analysis of a major medieval poem. The late fourteenth-century English poem Winner and Waster narrates a debate between the forces of avarice (Winner) and generosity (Waster); it ranges widely over a number of major issues in the political life of England during Edward III's reign. This book sets out to re-date the poem from the 1350s to the 1360s, and in so doing to question whether its principal message really revolves (as so much earlier scholarship has insisted) around the state of public order and the costs of warfare in the 1350s. Instead, it proposes that the poem echoes debates about Edward III's ability to maintain concord between the members of his household, to manage the extravagance in clothing that prompted the sumptuary laws of 1363, and to run his peace-time finances of the 1360s in such a way as to guarantee the solvency of the crown. Drawing extensively on the records of parliament and on contemporary chronicles, this volume sets Winner and Waster within the wider context of other complaint literature of the fourteenth century, and characterizes it as one of the most politically - and socially - engaged works of the period.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Note on Editions List of Abbreviations Introduction Winner and Waster: A Poem on the Times Chivalry and Internationalism: The Garter Feast of 1358 and English Diplomacy during the 1350s and 1360s Treason, Public Order and Dispute Settlement: the Statute of Treasons of 1352 and Royal Arbitration Landed Society, Conspicuous Consumption and the Political Economy: The Sumptuary Laws of 1363 The Private and the Public Spheres: The Royal Household and State Finance under Edward III Satire, Complaint and Authorship: Winner and Waster and the Alliterative Revival of the Fourteenth Century Winner and Waster: Timeliness and Timelessness Appendix 1: Timeline, 1337-1370 Appendix 2: A Modern English Version of Winner and Waster Bibliography Index
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Waste Land after One Hundred Years
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the legacy of The Waste Land on the centenary of its original publication, looking at the impact it had had upon criticism and new poetries across one hundred years. T. S. Eliot first published his long poem The Waste Land in 1922. The revolutionary nature of the work was immediately recognised, and it has subsequently been acknowledged as one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century, and as crucial for the understanding of modernism. The essays in this collection variously reflect on The Waste Land one hundred years after its original publication. At this centenary moment, the contributors both celebrate the richness of the work, its sounds and rare use of language, and also consider the poem's legacy in Britain, Ireland, and India. The work here, by an international team of writers from the UK, North America, and India, deploys a range of approaches. Some contributors seek to re-read the poem itself in fresh and original ways; others resist the established drift of previous scholarship on the poem, and present new understandings of the process of its development through its drafts, or as an orchestration on the page. Several contributors question received wisdom about the poem's immediate legacy in the decade after publication, and about the impact that it has had upon criticism and new poetries across the first century of its existence. An Introduction to the volume contextualises the poem itself, and the background to the essays. All pieces set out to review the nature of our understanding of the poem, and to bring fresh eyes to its brilliance, one hundred years on. Contributors: Rebecca Beasley, Rosinka Chaudhuri, William Davies, Hugh Haughton, Marjorie Perloff, Andrew Michael Roberts, Peter Robinson, Michael Wood.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Steven Matthews 1 A 'Dangerous Model': Resisting The Waste Land - Rebecca Beasley 2 Beyond the Sanskrit Words: Decolonizing Eliot in Modernity - Rosinka Chaudhuri 3 'An Icon of Recurrence': The Waste Land's Anniversaries - William Davies 4 'O City, city': Sounding The Waste Land - Hugh Haughton 5 Lost and Found in Translation: Foreign Language Citations in The Waste Land - Marjorie Perloff 6 The Poetic Afterlife of The Waste Land - Andrew Michael Roberts 7 Compositional Process and Critical Product - Peter Robinson 8 Hypocrisy and After: Persons in The Waste Land - Michael Wood Index
£38.00
Liverpool University Press Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics: Second,
Book SynopsisThis book has three distinctive characteristics: (1) It offers a widely interdisciplinary perspective; (2) It provides a comprehensive view of poetry, with groups of chapters on the Sound Stratum of Poetry (rhyme patterns and gestalt theory; metre and rhythm; expressiveness and musicality of speech sounds); the Units-of-Meaning Stratum (semantic representation and information processing, metaphor, rhyme and meaning, literary synaesthesia); the World Stratum; Regulative Concepts (genre, period style, archetypal patterns); the Poetry of Orientation and Disorientation (experiential and mystic poetry versus poetry of emotional disorientation; and the grotesque); the Poetry of Altered States of Consciousness (hypnotic and ecstatic poetry); Critics and Criticism; and Cognitive Poetics vs. Cognitive Linguistics; (3) It goes into minute details of poetic texts, so as to account for subtle intuitions of readers. Updating from the first edition consists of samples from the author's later instrumental study of the rhythmical performance of poetry and the expressiveness of speech sounds; and in three chapters responding to the later work of three cognitive linguists.Trade Review"In one of the founding studies of cognitive literary criticism, Tsur combines earlier theoretical approaches (such as Russian formalism) with methods from cognitive psychology and other fields within cognitive science, resulting in a capacious and suggestive survey of many aspects of literary form in light of their perceived effects on readers." -- Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide"In one of the founding studies of cognitive literary criticism, Tsur combines earlier theoretical approaches (such as Russian formalism) with methods from cognitive psychology and other fields within cognitive science, resulting in a capacious and suggestive survey of many aspects of literary form in light of their perceived effects on readers." -- Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide.Table of ContentsGeneral Assumptions -- The Nature of Cognitive Poetics; Mental and Vocal Performance in Poetry Reading; Constructing a Stable World; Structure and Perceived Qualities. The Sound Stratum of Poetry -- Rhyme Patterns, Gestalt Theory and Perceptual Forces; Metre and Rhythm; Delivery Style and Listener Response: An Empirical Study; Expressiveness and Musicality of Speech Sounds. The Units-of-Meaning Stratum -- Semantic Representation and Information Processing; Literary Synaesthesia. The World Stratum -- The Representative Anecdote: Human Contingency. Regulative Concepts -- The Versatile Reader: Style as Open Concept; Style as Diagnosis and as Hypothesis: Archetypal Patterns. Poetry of Orientation & Disorientation -- Space Perception and Poetry of Orientation; poetry of Disorientation; The Grotesque as an Aesthetic Mode. Poetry of Altered States of Consciousness -- Poetry and Altered States of Consciousness; Obtrusive Rhythms and Emotive Crescendo; The Divergent Passage and Ecstatic Poetry. Critics and Criticism -- The Implied Critic's Decision Style; The Critic's Mental Dictionary. Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Linguistics -- Lakoff's Roads Not Taken; Deixis in Literature: What Isn't Cognitive Poetics?; Comparing Approaches to Versification Style in Cyrano de Bergerac; Index.
£23.40
Liverpool University Press John Betjeman: Reading the Victorians
Book SynopsisJohn Betjeman was undoubtedly the most popular Poet Laureate since Tennyson. But beneath the thoroughly modern window on Britain that he opened during his lifetime lay the influence of his nineteenth-century forbears. This book explores his identity through such Victorianism via the verse of that period, but also its architecture, religious faith and -- more importantly -- religious doubt. It was, nevertheless, a process which took time. In the 1930s Betjeman's work was tinted with modernism and traditionalism. He found Victorian buildings 'funny' and wrote much in praise of the Bauhaus style, even though his early poetry was peppered with Victorian references. This leaning was incorporated into a greater sense of purpose during World War 2, when he transformed himself from precious humorist into propagandist. The resulting sense of cohesion grew when the dangers of post-war urban redevelopment heightened the need to critique the present via the poetics of the past, a mood which continued up to and beyond his gaining the Laureateship in 1972. This duty proved to be a millstone, so the 'official' poems are thus explored by the author more fully than hitherto. The conclusion of looks back to Betjeman's 1960 verse-autobiography, 'Summoned by Bells', which is seen as the apogee of his achievement and a snapshot of his identity. Included here is the first critical appreciation of the lyrics embodied within the text, which are taken as a map of the young poet's literary growth. Larkin's 1959 question 'What exactly is Betjeman?' then leads to a final appraisal of his originality, as evidenced by his glances towards postmodernism, feminism, and post-colonialism. The fact is that Betjeman never quite fits in anywhere. He is always a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole -- often for the sheer enjoyment of so being. In a sense, his desire to be as non-conformist as a Quaker meeting house makes him a radical, rather than the reactionary that his interests imply. He was a champion of beauty and the British Isles, and clearly did much to make us see the worth of our Victorian forebears. Greg Morse's book highlights this important facet of his work.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Reading Women's Poetry
Book SynopsisUntil quite recently, anthologies of English poetry contained very few poems by women, and histories of English poetry gave little space to women poets. How should poetry lovers respond? The book begins by suggesting four possible responses: the conservative, which claims that women have not written many good poems; individual recuperation, which salvages some fine poems by women but without altering the general view of English poetry; alternative canon, which claims that women do not write the same kind of poetry as men, so that their work should be judged by different standards; and cultural recuperation, which claims that women's poetry is a significant cultural phenomenon, and should be read and studied without subjecting it to any tests. All these positions can be defended, and this book has elements of them all. As the title indicates, this book is about reading women's poems, rather than forming theories about them: it explores the experience of reading Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Browning, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and many others. Beginning with Katherine Philips, the first Englishwoman to achieve fame as a poet, it covers three centuries to the work of Marianne Moore and Stevie Smith, but does not include the many living women poets who deserve a volume to themselves. In order to discuss adequately the work of those included, it was necessary to omit many other women poets: the selection has been made on merit, and to readers who miss some of their favourite poets the only answer can be that the book does nothing to discourage reading other poets. Indeed, it is hoped that the form of discussion of the selected poems will be helpful in engaging further with women poets of all calibres. Do women write differently from men? The author assumes no predetermined answer but is very willing to ask the question; and in order to do so he frequently compares poems by women with poems by men, not so much to ask who writes better as to explore similarities and differences: thus Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is discussed along with Alexander Pope, Emily Dickinson along with Gerard Manly Hopkins and Elizabeth Browning along with her husband. Poems by women should be read, enjoyed, and argued about. They can be related to the time they were written and first admired, or to our views on women's history, or to our expectations of what poetry can offer -- but above all they should be enjoyed. And that is the faith in which this book is written.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part 1: The Beginnings; Part 2: Augustan & Romantic; Part 3: The Nineteenth Century; Part 4: The Twentieth Century; Index.
£28.79
Liverpool University Press Poets and Partitions: Confronting Communal
Book SynopsisThis book offers a comprehensive analysis of Northern Irish poetry focusing on the colonial, political, and cultural underpinnings that have shaped artistic expression in a variety of ways. In discussing the rich poetry reflecting the conflict of community, Jon Curley examines what aesthetic choices poets make in order to register, resist, or re-imagine life and thought under particularly tumultuous conditions. The focus is on both the better-known contemporary Northern Irish poets as well as their more obscure but no less significant counterparts. Forms of communal identity generated in Northern Ireland are examined by way of an ethical critique that references the conceptual blockages and innovations that help foster new poetic representations of society. Establishing the complexity and potency of poetic experimentation, Poets and Partitions is a timely commentary for all those interested in the intersection of aesthetics and politics. The exploration of communal identity-formations in Northern Irish poetry or poetry in general has been dismissed by some critics as an unhelpful approach to understanding literature. But, as this study demonstrates, it is a vital area of scholarly examination and Jon Curley's in-depth analysis illuminates understanding of how poets confront their communal, social, and sectarian orders.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Leigh Hunt and What is Poetry?: Romanticism and
Book SynopsisTo most literary historians, the name of Leigh Hunt does not rank very high: he is mostly known as an idiosyncratic and mediocre poet, a versatile but slightly superficial critic, a man who taxed his friends' patience to the utmost, and -- probably most of all -- the man who exercised an evil influence on Keats. However, there is much more to Hunt than has hitherto been written about him. He was a voracious reader who had a well-developed literary taste, and was a true democrat in that he wanted "the interested layman" to share the enthusiasm which the reading and apprehension of poetry had given him. Hence his essay "What Is Poetry?", which, apart from comments of a more theoretical kind, contains numerous examples from several ages and languages of what in his opinion qualified as fine poetry. His essay is inscribed in the line of theoretical writing on poetry that inspired Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth to write their well-known treatises. Hunt distinguishes himself from those three in that his main emphasis is on the reader. This book is gently didactic in that it hopes that the reader would follow and benefit from his advice. Although not a text of sustained theoretical discussion, What Is Poetry? is, in its own idiosyncratic way, a valuable contribution to early 19th century literary criticism. Flemming Olsen provides a long overdue analysis and critique of the essay, which even today is widely read and available, and of Hunt's place in the Romantic movement as it sought to engage with the wider public. Hunt's achievement -- apart from his gift as a talent scout and his altruistic assistance to budding geniuses -- was that he strove to put his enormous, if erratic, learning at the disposal of ordinary people. This book is essential reading for all those engaged with poetry.Table of ContentsPreface; The Man; Hunt's Relationships with Some of the Romantic Poets; Hunt's What is Poetry?; A Critique of What is Poetry?; Hunt's Literary Credo; Conclusion; Index.
£27.06
Liverpool University Press The Ambassadors of Death: The Sister Arts,
Book SynopsisTuvia Rubner, winner of Israel Prize for Poetry (2008), is a Hebrew poet who lost his family in the Holocaust. He turned his personal trauma into a broad world view that engages with Western culture, his poetry highlighting correspondences with paintings by Chagall, Breughel, Holbein, Turner and Rembrandt. Death and loss are molding experiences in this poet's world. Paint and sculpture masterpieces are signalled as masks, as Ambassadors of Death. Rubner's poems enable us to examine the tradition of various forms of artistic representation, while addressing the experience of art in a century when God 'hid his face' from the fate of European Jewry. And as Shahar Bram discovers and elaborates, herein lies an exquisite example of the use of ekphrasis -- Rubner using his poetic language medium to explain and process the meaning and messages inherent in a select group of paintings and sculptures of cultural significance. This important book contributes to the interdisciplinary theory of "word and image", and the history of the relationships between "sister arts". The result is not only a unique perspective of traditional Western art form as reflected in the eyes of a Hebrew survivor of twentieth-century Holocaust atrocities, but, in the words of Ruskin, it is "the expression of one soul [one artistic form] talking to another". The result is a profound understanding of the central principles of word and image art forms. Konrad-Adenauer Prize for Literature 2012Table of ContentsIntroduction: Achilles' Shield; The Fall; The Ambassadors of Death; Horse & Rider; The Silence of Words; The Structure of Narrative; The Chaos of Colors & the Order of Words; The Fallen Angel & the Survivor's Burning Eye; Epilogue: Ekphrasis, Mimesis & the Difference between Word & Image; Index.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Poetic Rhythm: Structure and Performance -- An
Book SynopsisThis research is an instrumental investigation of a theory of rhythmical performance of poetry, originally propounded speculatively in the author's Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre (1977). "Iambic pentameter" means that there is a verse unit consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable (in this order), and that the verse line consists of five such units. In the first 165 verse lines of Paradise Lost there are two such lines. The theory takes up one of the central issues in metrical studies: all criteria for metricality hitherto proposed have been violated by the greatest masters of musicality in English poetry. The question arises, how do we recognise two verse lines that are very different in their structures as instances of the same abstract pattern of, eg: iambic pentameter; and how do we distinguish a metrical from an unmetrical line. One great difference between this theory of metre and others concerns the status of deviation. Most theoreticians deploy a battery of tools to make deviant stress patterns conform with metric pattern. Only when all attempts fail do they speak of "tension". When they succeed, they blur the distinction between, for example, Milton's and Pope's metrical styles. Or else, they have formulated different rules of metricality for Shakespeare and Milton. This theory assumes that when the versification patterns and linguistic patterns conflict, they can be accommodated in a pattern of "Rhythmical Performance" -- namely one in which the conflicting patterns are simultaneously perceptible. There are scales of mounting difficulties of mismatches, on which each poet (and each theorist) draws at different points the boundary of what is acceptable. Reuven Tsur's revised and expanded edition (original publication, Peter Lang, 1986) is essential reading for all scholars and students involved in versification and Cognitive Poetics.Table of ContentsClergy Interest in Innovative Collaboration with Psychologists; Collaborate with Whom? Clergy Responses to Psychologist Characteristics; Faith-Based Substance Abuse Treatment Programs; Psychology-Church Collaboration: Finding a New Level of Mutual Participation; Using Psychology to Facilitate Christian Living: Description of a First Step in Building a Program of Collaboration; Psychology Collaborating with the Church: a Pastor-Psychologists Perspective and Personal Experience; Psychology and the Church: Collaboration Opportunities; Counsellor-Clergy Collaboration in a Church-Based Counselling Ministry; Psychological Consultation with the Roman Catholic Church: Integrating Who We Are with What We Do; The Evangelical Free Churchs Recovery Ministry: a Collaborative Approach to Restoration and Reconciliation; Healing the Broken-hearted: Cross and Couch Together; Psychologists and Health Care : Chaplains Doing Research Together; Collaboration Through Research: the Multi-method Church-Based Assessment Process; Psychology Serving the Church in the United Kingdom: Church Consultancy and Pastoral Care; Psychology and Marriage Ministry Collaborations; Psychology at Work Inside and Outside the Church: Bridging the Gaps Between Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual Health; Psychological Resources in Faith-Based Community Settings: Applications, Adaptations, and Innovations; A Psychologist-Pastor: a Bridge For Churches at a Christian Community Health Centre; Promoting Change Through the African American Church and Social Activism; God is Active in Human Affairs: a Response to Thom Moore.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Poetic Rhythm: Structure and Performance -- An
Book SynopsisThis research is an instrumental investigation of a theory of rhythmical performance of poetry, originally propounded speculatively in the author's Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre (1977). "Iambic pentameter" means that there is a verse unit consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable (in this order), and that the verse line consists of five such units. In the first 165 verse lines of Paradise Lost there are two such lines. The theory takes up one of the central issues in metrical studies: all criteria for metricality hitherto proposed have been violated by the greatest masters of musicality in English poetry. The question arises, how do we recognise two verse lines that are very different in their structures as instances of the same abstract pattern of, eg: iambic pentameter; and how do we distinguish a metrical from an unmetrical line. One great difference between this theory of metre and others concerns the status of deviation. Most theoreticians deploy a battery of tools to make deviant stress patterns conform with metric pattern. Only when all attempts fail do they speak of "tension". When they succeed, they blur the distinction between, for example, Milton's and Pope's metrical styles. Or else, they have formulated different rules of metricality for Shakespeare and Milton. This theory assumes that when the versification patterns and linguistic patterns conflict, they can be accommodated in a pattern of "Rhythmical Performance" -- namely one in which the conflicting patterns are simultaneously perceptible. There are scales of mounting difficulties of mismatches, on which each poet (and each theorist) draws at different points the boundary of what is acceptable. Reuven Tsur's revised and expanded edition (original publication, Peter Lang, 1986) is essential reading for all scholars and students involved in versification and Cognitive Poetics.Table of ContentsClergy Interest in Innovative Collaboration with Psychologists; Collaborate with Whom? Clergy Responses to Psychologist Characteristics; Faith-Based Substance Abuse Treatment Programs; Psychology-Church Collaboration: Finding a New Level of Mutual Participation; Using Psychology to Facilitate Christian Living: Description of a First Step in Building a Program of Collaboration; Psychology Collaborating with the Church: a Pastor-Psychologists Perspective and Personal Experience; Psychology and the Church: Collaboration Opportunities; Counsellor-Clergy Collaboration in a Church-Based Counselling Ministry; Psychological Consultation with the Roman Catholic Church: Integrating Who We Are with What We Do; The Evangelical Free Churchs Recovery Ministry: a Collaborative Approach to Restoration and Reconciliation; Healing the Broken-hearted: Cross and Couch Together; Psychologists and Health Care : Chaplains Doing Research Together; Collaboration Through Research: the Multi-method Church-Based Assessment Process; Psychology Serving the Church in the United Kingdom: Church Consultancy and Pastoral Care; Psychology and Marriage Ministry Collaborations; Psychology at Work Inside and Outside the Church: Bridging the Gaps Between Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual Health; Psychological Resources in Faith-Based Community Settings: Applications, Adaptations, and Innovations; A Psychologist-Pastor: a Bridge For Churches at a Christian Community Health Centre; Promoting Change Through the African American Church and Social Activism; God is Active in Human Affairs: a Response to Thom Moore.
£42.75
Liverpool University Press John Betjeman: Reading the Victorians
Book SynopsisJohn Betjeman was undoubtedly the most popular Poet Laureate since Tennyson. But beneath the thoroughly modern window on Britain that he opened during his lifetime lay the influence of his nineteenth-century forbears. This book explores his identity through such Victorianism via the verse of that period, but also its architecture, religious faith and -- more importantly -- religious doubt. It was, nevertheless, a process which took time. In the 1930s Betjeman's work was tinted with modernism and traditionalism. He found Victorian buildings 'funny' and wrote much in praise of the Bauhaus style, even though his early poetry was peppered with Victorian references. This leaning was incorporated into a greater sense of purpose during World War 2, when he transformed himself from precious humorist into propagandist. The resulting sense of cohesion grew when the dangers of post-war urban redevelopment heightened the need to critique the present via the poetics of the past, a mood which continued up to and beyond his gaining the Laureateship in 1972. This duty proved to be a millstone, so the 'official' poems are thus explored by the author more fully than hitherto. The conclusion of looks back to Betjeman's 1960 verse-autobiography, 'Summoned by Bells', which is seen as the apogee of his achievement and a snapshot of his identity. Included here is the first critical appreciation of the lyrics embodied within the text, which are taken as a map of the young poet's literary growth. Larkin's 1959 question 'What exactly is Betjeman?' then leads to a final appraisal of his originality, as evidenced by his glances towards postmodernism, feminism, and post-colonialism. The fact is that Betjeman never quite fits in anywhere. He is always a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole -- often for the sheer enjoyment of so being. In a sense, his desire to be as non-conformist as a Quaker meeting house makes him a radical, rather than the reactionary that his interests imply. He was a champion of beauty and the British Isles, and clearly did much to make us see the worth of our Victorian forebears. Greg Morse's book highlights this important facet of his work.Table of ContentsPreface; Introduction; A Review of the literature; The Model; Simulating the Entry of Multinationals without Profit Repatriation; Simulating the Entry of Multinationals with Profit Repatriation; Conclusions; Index.
£31.87
Liverpool University Press Eliot's Objective Correlative: Tradition or
Book SynopsisEliot's dictum about the objective correlative has often been quoted but rarely analysed. This book traces the maxim to some of its sources and places it in a contemporary context. Eliot agreed with Locke about the necessity of sensory input, but for a poet to be able to create poetry, the input has to be processed by the poet's intellect. Respect for control of feelings and order of presentation were central to Eliot's conception of literary criticism. The result the objective correlative is not one word, but "a scene" or "a chain of events". Eliot's thinking was also inspired by late 19th century French critics like Gautier and Gourmont, whose terminology he not infrequently borrowed. But he chose the term "objective" out of respect for the prestige that still surrounded the Positivist paradigm. In its break-away from Positivist dogmas, criticism of art in the early 20th century was very much preoccupied with form. In poetry, that meant focus on the use and function of the word. That focus is perceptible everywhere in Eliot's criticism. Even though the idea of the objective correlative was not an original one, Eliot's treatment of it is interesting because he sees a seeming truism ("the right word in the right place") in a new light. He never developed the theory, but the thought is traceable in several of his critical essays. On account of its categorical and rudimentary form, the theory is not unproblematic: whose fault is it if the reader's response does not square with the poet's intention? And indeed, Eliot's own practice belies his theory -- witness the multifarious legitimate interpretations of his poems.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Disequilibrium of German Identity; An Overview of Holocaust Studies & Its Causes; The Roots: Anti-Semitism or German Theory of Race?; The First Apex: The Problematic Nature of the German National Identity; The Second Apex: Race Theory Re-examined; The Third Apex: German Jewry; The Fateful Triangle: Some Insights for the Future; A Changing Self-Image vis-a-vis the Holocaust; Post-War German Structure, Attitudes & Identity; Conclusion: The Force of Nationality in the Past & in the Future; Index.
£28.79
Liverpool University Press Banker Poet: The Rise and Fall of Samuel Rogers,
Book SynopsisSamuel Rogers was arguably the most widely read poet of the early nineteenth century. He was also a prominent figure in the literary and cultural life of London and owned one of the largest private art collections of his day. He was well known to at least three generations of celebrated figures, ranging from John Wilkes and Dr. Burney, through Wordsworth, Scott and Byron, to Tennyson, Dickens and Ruskin. He was also associated with other prominent national figures such as Charles James Fox, Joseph Priestley, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Wellington. Known throughout his life (not always sympathetically) as the Banker Poet', he came from a radical, Dissenting background. He was supportive of the French Revolution and politically active in the 1790s when to be so involved personal danger (he attended the treason trials of Tom Paine and Horne Tooke). Nevertheless he considered his true vocation to be poetry and achieved considerable success and fame when The Pleasures of Memory was published in 1792. Ten years later he retired' to a civilised home in St. James's Place where his breakfast and dinner parties were legendary. His art collection attracted visitors from all over the world, and his poem Italy, composed after an extended tour there in 1815, was widely read. Martin Blocksidge considers the nature of Rogers' poetry and the reputation it acquired, and examines its cultural context; likewise Rogers' connoisseurship of paintings. Rogers was famous, but controversial, provoking some distaste and consequent satirical treatment, most notably from his erstwhile friend, Byron. Biographical and interdisciplinary, this narrative is relevant not only to literary historians but to those interested in the history of Dissenting and radical groups, picturesque travel, art history and the cultural history of London.
£999.99
Liverpool University Press Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy: Readings in
Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy: Readings in
Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.
£32.50
Liverpool University Press The Poetic and Real Worlds of César Vallejo
Book SynopsisThe world-renowned Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892-1938) was also a journalist, essayist, novelist and would-be dramatist. The study of his life and work has encountered problems since the 1950s, stemming from the fact that half of his writing was published posthumously under editorship of doubtful accuracy. The matter is further complicated in that his non-poetic work has been neglected in favour of his verse. A Struggle between Art and Politics reviews the evidence -- literary and historical -- now reliably to hand, and assesses the often conflicting body of opinion his work has generated. Three essential questions are pertinent: Where should Vallejo be placed in the canon of twentieth-century modernism? What effect did his mid-life conversion to Communism have on his writing? How should his prose fiction, journalism and essays be assessed in relation to his poetry? There are few writers whose literary output follows the twists and turns of their lives more closely than César Vallejo's. This new, comparative study maps his career onto the cultural, social, political and historical backdrop to his life in Peru, France, Spain and Russia, and analyses his writings in the light of his life circumstances. Vallejo's journey from Peru, the cultural "periphery", to the "centre" of inter-war Paris, his experience of European capitalism during the Depression, and the confrontation of Communism and Fascism, ultimately played out in the Spanish Civil War, forced him to wage a personal struggle to reconcile art with life and politics. This challenge is fought out in different ways in his various writings, but nowhere more movingly, passionately and humanely than in his posthumous poetry.Trade Review"Bob Brittons book brings Cesar Vallejo fascinatingly to life-illuminating both the key moments and the more intimate details. Britton interweaves the life and the creative drive of this extraordinary poet with such fresh insights that you return to Vallejos work with a renewed thirst." -- Adam Feinstein, Biographer & Translator of Pablo Neruda"Complete with its own excellent translations of all material quoted from Vallejo (an achievement which deserves recognition in its own right: his translation of Trilce I is better than most), plus a judicious, non-partisan survey of scholarship on Vallejo, the book will stand as a fine, accessible guide to one of the twentieth centurys great poets." -- Adam Sharman, University of Nottingham
£100.00
Liverpool University Press The Poetic and Real Worlds of César Vallejo
Book SynopsisThe world-renowned Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892-1938) was also a journalist, essayist, novelist and would-be dramatist. The study of his life and work has encountered problems since the 1950s, stemming from the fact that half of his writing was published posthumously under editorship of doubtful accuracy. The matter is further complicated in that his non-poetic work has been neglected in favour of his verse. A Struggle between Art and Politics reviews the evidence -- literary and historical -- now reliably to hand, and assesses the often conflicting body of opinion his work has generated. Three essential questions are pertinent: Where should Vallejo be placed in the canon of twentieth-century modernism? What effect did his mid-life conversion to Communism have on his writing? How should his prose fiction, journalism and essays be assessed in relation to his poetry? There are few writers whose literary output follows the twists and turns of their lives more closely than César Vallejo's. This new, comparative study maps his career onto the cultural, social, political and historical backdrop to his life in Peru, France, Spain and Russia, and analyses his writings in the light of his life circumstances. Vallejo's journey from Peru, the cultural "periphery", to the "centre" of inter-war Paris, his experience of European capitalism during the Depression, and the confrontation of Communism and Fascism, ultimately played out in the Spanish Civil War, forced him to wage a personal struggle to reconcile art with life and politics. This challenge is fought out in different ways in his various writings, but nowhere more movingly, passionately and humanely than in his posthumous poetry.Trade Review"Bob Brittons book brings Cesar Vallejo fascinatingly to life-illuminating both the key moments and the more intimate details. Britton interweaves the life and the creative drive of this extraordinary poet with such fresh insights that you return to Vallejos work with a renewed thirst." -- Adam Feinstein, Biographer & Translator of Pablo Neruda"Complete with its own excellent translations of all material quoted from Vallejo (an achievement which deserves recognition in its own right: his translation of Trilce I is better than most), plus a judicious, non-partisan survey of scholarship on Vallejo, the book will stand as a fine, accessible guide to one of the twentieth centurys great poets." -- Adam Sharman, University of Nottingham
£32.50
Liverpool University Press Expression of Things: Themes in Thomas Hardy's
Book SynopsisJohn Hughes explores Hardys claim that his art sought to intensify the expression of things through three main sections on music, the body, and voice. These offer intersecting and mutually informing discussions of the central drama of inexpression and expressivity in Hardys work, as it affects the various personae of the text, including the reader. Throughout, the book draws on themes in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell to reveal how Hardys fiction and poetry express and represent the affective and physical conditions of mind, and their conflicts with social fictions of identity. The first main section on music incorporates three chapters that examine how Hardys writing stages musical experience as an expression of human desire and individuality at odds with the constraints of rationality, Victorian fiction form, and social convention. Intricate and extensive readings are linked also to larger contextual and theoretical issues in order to show how music as a theme and motif highlights the kinds of creativity and ethical cruxes that characterise Hardys work throughout his career. The second section -- on embodiment and sensation shows how close attention to Hardys writing on the topics of facial and bodily expression (and affectivity) reveal much about the sources of his inspiration, and its philosophical conditions and implications. The third section on voice offers three chapters, each of which centrally employs a close metrical reading of an important Hardy poem within its larger biographical and inter-textual contexts. These readings demonstrate how fundamental were Hardys innovations in meter to the power and originality of his work, and to its expressive treatment of his abiding preoccupations with love, grief, childhood, and the loss of faith.
£100.00