Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first book-length study of the classicism of Tony Harrison, one of the most important contemporary poets in England and the world. It argues that his unique and politically radical classicism is inextricable from his core notion that poetry should be a public property in which communal problems are shared and crystallised, and that the poet has a responsibility to speak in a public voice about collective and political concerns. Enriched by Edith Hall's longstanding friendship with Harrison and involvement with his most recent drama, inspired by Euripides'
Iphigenia in Tauris, it also asserts that his greatest innovations in both form and style have been direct results of his intense engagements with individual works of ancient literature and his belief that the ancient Greek poetic imagination was inherently radical.Tony Harrison''s large body of work, for which he has won several major and international prizes, and which features on the UK National Curriculum, range
Trade Review[Hall’s] shared interests and wide-ranging knowledge of the classical world and its reception, besides her sympathetic understanding of Harrison’s outlook, make this a most engaging study. * The Classical Review *
Hall’s book is ... engaging and erudite. * The Scottish Left Review *
Tony Harrison is a persuasive, timely, important study which goes right to the top of any reading list of Harrison scholarship and joins the canon of class-based classical reception studies. * Translation and Literature *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Timeline of Tony Harrison’s Classics-Informed Works 1 ‘Models of eloquence’: Radical Classicism 2 ‘Stone bodies’: Statuary in
The Loiners (1970) and
Palladas (1975) 3 ‘Frontiers of Appetite’:
Phaedra Britannica (1975) 4 ‘Shaggermemnon’: Aeschylus’
Oresteia and
Continuous (1981) 5 ‘All the versuses of life’: ‘
v.’ and
Medea: A Sex-War Opera (1985) 6 ‘Bookworm excreta’:
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1988) and Other Plays and Poems 7 ‘End to end in technicolour’:
Prometheus (1998) and Other Films 8 ‘Witnessed horror’:
Fram (2008) and Harrison’s Euripides 9 ‘Surviving the slopes of Parnassus’:
‘Polygons’ (2015) and Other Poems Notes Bibliography Index
