Description
Book SynopsisThere is something offensive about poetry, judging by the number of attacks on it and defences of it. The author argues that poetry exists to offend - not through its subject matter but through the challenges it presents to the prevailing view of what language is for. He also specifies four poetic offences - gesture, drama, fiction, and trope.
Trade Review"Adams continues to transmit the explosiveness and idiosyncrasy of the literary and philosophical works he loves most. With undeniable passion and intellectual range, he situates these works historically and imagines them surging forth . . . to help us tolerate a culture of bottom lines and effective communication."
-- Benjamine Lee * Modern Philology *
Table of ContentsPreface
1. Introduction: Scandal and Offense
Part I. Historical: Attack and Defense
2. Attack
3. Defense
Part II. Theoretical: Four Offenses
4. Gesture
5. Drama
6. Fiction
7. Trope
Part III. Critical: Studies in Antithetical Offense
8. Vico and Blake: Poetic Logic as Offense
9. Blake and Joyce: Friends in Offense
10. Joyce Cary's Antitheticality and His Politics of Experience
11. Seamus Heaney's Criticism and the Antithetical
12. The Double Offense of Great Bad Poetry; or, McGonagal Apotheosized
Epilogue: Reminders Not Quite Gentle
Index
