Description
Book SynopsisGuido Mazzoni tells the story of poetry’s revolution in the modern age. The chief transformation was the rise of the lyric as it is now conceived: a genre in which a first-person speaker talks about itself. Mazzoni argues that modern poetry embodies the age of the individual and has wrought profound changes in the expectations of readers.
Trade ReviewA valuable text…It is, at its core, a rich literature review circling what Mazzoni goes to great lengths to illustrate is the slipperiness of its subject. Modern poetry becomes no clearer after the author’s rigorous analysis, but as a continued step in the inscrutable analysis of poetry,
On Modern Poetry offers a necessary and well-rehearsed step forward. -- Anthony DeGenaro * Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature *
In this sweeping comparative study, Guido Mazzoni shows how poetry’s fate in the post-Romantic world reflects the individualism of modern Western society: atomized by small differences, narcissistic, ‘free.’ His sociological reading of modern poetry goes well beyond the conventional approach of matching poems and poets with local context. It discusses an entire corpus against the largest historical backdrop. Revelatory and often troubling,
On Modern Poetry is criticism of the highest order. -- David Quint, author of
Epic and EmpireRanging widely across European and American verse traditions, Guido Mazzoni maps the space of a modern poetry fundamentally determined by the Romantic revolution of self-expression. He shrewdly illuminates the ways in which modern poetry departs from earlier poetic conventions, shaped indelibly by the paradoxes of modern life. -- Jonathan Culler, author of
Theory of the LyricThis is a book that many people will want to read, and a book that contemporary scholars
should read. Tackling the uneven historical development of ‘Western’ ideas of lyric,
On Modern Poetry is engaged in exactly the conversation those of us interested in the field of poetics need to have right now. I, for one, am grateful for Mazzoni’s many contributions. -- Virginia Jackson, author of
Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric ReadingThis richly erudite book isn’t shy about its provocative thesis. Modern poetry, Mazzoni argues, diverges from both earlier poetic forms and the novel by virtue of its relentless drive toward subjectivism, autobiographism, and egocentrism. Charting the gaudy triumph of lyric individuation, he ranges impressively across two hundred years of canonical poetry in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish. -- Jahan Ramazani, author of
Poetry in a Global Age
