This volume of Robert Burns's Commonplace Books, Tours Journals and Miscellaneous Prose Works is a major contribution to our understanding of the life and writings of one of the major Scottish, and British, poets of all times. To the extent that the Commonplace Books and other prose writings offer a glimpse into Burns's creative workshop, they record the self-conscious poetic development of a man who was endowed with none of the advantages of birth and education enjoyed by many other writers. Spanning nearly two decades of his sadly foreshortened life, they permit a new understanding of his unique relationship to the literary and social culture of late eighteenth-century Scotland, and help explain how and why this humbly-born Ayrshire farmer became a poet of world renown. The items included here have never before been published complete in one volume (some are published for the first time), and they are arranged chronologically in order to highlight the major creative stages of his life. In contrast to the poems and songs, most of the material included was unpublished during the poet's lifetime, so this new edition is largely based on fresh transcriptions of manuscripts in Burns's hand, or in the hands of his various amanuenses. It offers diplomatic transcriptions that adhere as closely as possible to RB's original manuscript page, retaining his eccentric spellings, capitalisation, long and short dashes, punctuation, and use of ampersands, as well as marking revisions and elisions. The edition features a general introduction, and each item is preceded by full headnote, assessing its importance in relation to Burns's life and poetic corpus. Notes explicate names, cultural, historical and literary references, providing full cross-references these with the poetry and correspondence.

Poetry and Public Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America explores nineteenth-century poetry as it addresses and engages in the major concerns of American cultural life. Focusing on gender, biblical politics, Revolutionary discourses and racial, sectional, and religious identities, this book reveals how these issues contended and negotiated with each other in the shaping of a pluralist democratic polity. Nineteenth-century American poetry, far from being the self-reflective art object of twentieth-century aesthetic theory, offered a rhetorical arena in which civic, economic, and religious trends intersected with each other in mutual definition and investigation. With a deft hand, Shira Wolosky demonstrates the ways in which poetry was a core impulse in the formation of American identity and cultural definition.

W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H. D., and David Jones, major poets of the early twentieth century, were fully involved in the historic conflict between religion and science. Jacob Korg's study illuminates the manner in which they attempted to overcome the division between the two cultures - by incorporating elements of religious ritual as well as scientific experiment in their poems. Known primarily as innovators who devised new methods of artistic expression, these poets also employed ritual, a form even more ancient than myth, side by side with their experimental ventures. Through close study of their major poems, Korg shows that the interplay between these apparently contradictory principles was a persistent theme of modern poetry that played an important part in the poetic revolution of the time.

What do we mean by 'voice' in poetry? In this work, David Nowell Smith teases out the diverse meanings of 'voice', from a poem's soundworld to the rhetorical gestures through which poems speak to us, in order to embark on a philosophical exploration of the concept of voice itself.

First published in 1965, this reissue of the second edition of T. R. Henn's seminal study offers an impressive breadth and depth of meditations on the poetry of W. B. Yeats. His life and influences are discussed at length, from the impact of the Irish Rebellion upon his youth, to his training as a painter, to the influence of folklore, occultism and Indian philosophy on his work. Henn seeks out the many elements of Yeats' famously complex personality, as well as analysing the dominant symbols of his work, and their ramifications.

As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this timely reissue, first published in 1991, evaluates the function of poetry in wartime Europe, arguing that war poetry must be understood as a social as well as a literary phenomenon. As well as locating the work of well-known French, English and German war poets in a European context, Elizabeth Marsland discusses lesser-known poetry of the war years, including poems by women and the neglected tradition of civilian protest through poetry. Identifying shared characteristics as well as the unique features of each nation's poetry, The Nation's Cause affords new insight into the relationship between nationalism and the social attitudes that determined the conduct of war.

This book re-examines cultural, social, geographical and philosophical representations of Victorian London by looking at the transformations in urban life produced by the rise and development of urban mass-transport. It also radically re-addresses the questions of epistemology and gender in the Victorian metropolis by mapping the epistemology of the passenger. Vadillo focuses on the lyric urban writings of Amy Levy, Alice Meynell, 'Graham R. Tomson' (Rosamund Marriott Watson) and 'Michael Field' (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper). Shortlisted for the ESSE Book Prize

Les Murray is amongst the most gifted poets writing today, his multi-faceted talents have received high praise both in his native Australia and beyond. But he has also proved a controversial figure, whose poetry strays across the boundaries of political and cultural debate. The only full critical study of Murray's work available, Steven Matthews provides a complete picture of his career to date, from its early parables of national emergence to the working man's epic encounter with the major events of the twentieth century, Fredy Neptune. Provides detailed readings of key poems, as well as literary and cultural contexts for the rapid shifts in style and subject matter Murray has made from collection to collection. Gives an overview of Murray's place within Australian literature and national thought. -- .

Overviews the background, plot, themes, and language of Beowulf Perhaps the most important work written in Old English, Beowulf tells of a world very different from our own. While the history and culture behind the poem make it challenging for modern audiences, its story of war, violence, and heroism remains relevant to today's readers. Though largely neglected until the 20th century, Beowulf is now widely studied by school students and undergraduates. In addition, it continues to shape contemporary popular culture. This companion overviews the poem and its legacy. The first part of the book provides information of interest to a wide range of readers, while the second covers more specialized topics. Thus the initial chapters review the merits of different translations and offer a detailed plot summary, while later chapters discuss the poem's language and style, its treatment of religion, its relation to Anglo-Saxon culture, and its legacy in popular culture. One of the greatest Beowulf scholars was J.R.R. Tolkien, and the book gives special attention to his use of the poem in his own fiction. valuable guide to one of the most challenging yet enduring works of English literature.; Accessible to school students and general readers; Provides a detailed plot summary; Discusses the poem's background, style, and language; Discusses the poem's lasting influence on contemporary popular culture, including its influence on Tolkien

Romantic Visualities offers a culturally informed understanding of the literary significance of landscape in the Romantic period. Labbe argues that the Romantic period associated the prospect view with the masculine ideal, simultaneously fashioning the detailed point of view as feminised. An interdisciplinary study, it discusses the cultural construction of gender as defined through landscape viewing, and investigates property law, aesthetic tracts, conduct books, travel narratives, artistic theory, and the work of Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Charlotte Smith, Ann Francis, Dorothy Wordsworth and others.

Marriage features to a greater or lesser extent in virtually every play Shakespeare wrote - as the festive end of comedy, as the link across the cycles of the history plays, as a marker of the difference between his own society and that depicted in the Roman plays, and, all too often, as the starting-point for the tragedies. Situating his representations of marriage firmly within the ideologies and practices of Renaissance culture, Lisa Hopkins argues that Shakespeare anatomises marriage much as he does kingship, and finds it similarly indispensable to the underpinning of society, however problematic it may be as a guarantor of personal happiness.

The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth Century American Literature offers a cutting-edge assessment of the period's literature, providing readers with practical insights and proactive strategies for exploring novels, poems, and other literary creations.

A provocative approach to a famous figure in English poetry and to the relationship of literature to biography - both the poet's and the critic's own. Gary Waller, known for accessibly combining contemporary literary and cultural theory with Renaissance poetry, provides an intriguing overview of the period's most praised poet. Examining Spenser's career in terms of the material conditions of his poetry's production - factors of race, gender, class, agency - and the 'places' of its production - court, church, nation, colony - he also writes movingly of the 'place' the biographer occupies in the construction of a 'literary life'. The book includes chapters on Spenser's poetry and career, including an original account of the gender politics of his work and his difficult position between Ireland and England, the 'homes' about which he held increasingly painful feelings.

Philip Larkin is recognised as one of the most important writers to have emerged in Britain since the Second World War. First published in 1982, Andrew Motiona (TM)s study begins with an account of Larkina (TM)s life and literary background and discusses his literary relationship with Hardy and Yeats and his association with the Movement. He analyses Larkina (TM)s two novels and assesses his three mature collections. Throughout the book much reference is made to uncollected reviews and articles and occasionally to unpublished manuscripts. Rather than developing the familiar line on Larkin as an empirical and melancholy writer, Andrew Motion explores the Symbolist and transcendent element in his work, and emphasises its range and variety.

Though poets have always written about cities, the commonest critical categories (pastoral poetry, nature poetry, Romantic poetry, Georgian poetry, etc.) have usually stressed the rural, so that poetry can seem irrelevant to a predominantly urban populati. Explores a range of contemporary poets who visit the 'mean streets' of the contemporary urban scene, seeking the often cacophonous music of what happens here. Poets discussed include: Ken Smith, Iain Sinclair, Roy Fisher, Edwin Morgan, Sean O'Brien, Ciaran Carson, Peter Reading, Matt Simpson, Douglas Houston, Deryn Rees-Jones, Denise Riley, Ken Edwards, Levi Tafari, Aidan Hun, and Robert Hampson. Approaches contemporary poetry within a broad spectrum of personal, social, literary, and cultural concerns. Includes 'loco-specific' chapters, on cities including Hull, Liverpool, London, and Birmingham, with an additional chapter on 'post-industrial' cities such as Belfast, Glasgow and Dundee. -- .

This collection makes a critical and creative intervention into ongoing debates about the relationship between poetry and autobiography. Drawing on recent theories of life writing, the essays in the first part of this volume provide new analyses of works by a range of poets, dating from the early modern period to the present day. Exploring the autobiographical resonances of poems by Martha Moulsworth, Mina Loy, Anne Sexton, Joe Brainard, Edward Kamau Braithwaite, and Gwyneth Lewis, the authors here examine the extent to which discourses of truth and authenticity have been implicated in traditional interpretations of lyric poetry. In doing so, they endeavour to illuminate the complex intersections -- and divergences -- of poetry and autobiography, asking what these forms might learn from each other about issues of shared concern, from questions of identity and textuality to those of reference and audience. The creative reflections which form the second part of the collection develop and respond to these questions in various suggestive and original ways; here poetry and prose are used in order to test the relationship between poetry and life writing and to explore issues of memory, time, place, subjectivity and voice. This book was published as a special issue of Life Writing.

A survey of poetry from Northern Ireland, the Republic, Britain and the USA. The five chapters of the book cover the 1950s, 1960s, the early troubles period to 1976, the 1980s and 1990s. Each poet is placed firmly within his or her historical and social contexts, with an emphasis on the response to the processes of modernisation, the representation of violence, poetic form and gender. While the distinctiveness of Northern and Southern poetries is respected, Irish poets are seen to be engaged in a continual process of cross-border exchange. Over 30 individual poets are dealt with, and in each case detailed readings of individual poems are given along with contextual material. While the major critical issues are addressed the book is primarily concerned to break with the small canon of texts and poets which tends to dominate discussions of the subject, and emphasizes a heterogeneity and diversity of achievement. It avoids the imposition of a single interpretation on a diverse body of writing and makes the case for a wider appraisal of Irish poetry which considers international and mainstream influences. It concludes with a discussion of poetry of the diaspora at a time of the fragile Northern Ireland ceasefire and the "Celtic Tiger" phenomenon in the Republic.

Ted Hughes is widely regarded as a major figure in twentieth-century poetry, but the impact of Hughes's class background on his work has received little attention. This is the first full length study to take the measure of the importance of class in Hughes. It presents a radically new version of Hughes that challenges the image of Hughes as primarily a nature poet, as well as the image of the Tory Laureate. The controversy over 'natural' violence in Hughes's early poems, Hughes's relationship with Seamus Heaney, the Laureateship, and Hughes's revisiting of his relationship with Sylvia Plath in Birthday Letters "(1998), are reconsidered in terms of Hughes's class background. Drawing on the thinking of cultural theorists such as Slavoj i ek, Terry Eagleton, and Julia Kristeva, the book presents new political readings of familiar Hughes poems, alongside consideration of posthumously collected poems and letters, to reveal a surprising picture of a profoundly class-conscious poet.

First published in 1967, this is a study which tackles the central problem of meaning, within Ezra Pound's The Cantos. It deals with the question of important critical issues, as well as of interpretation and understanding. Students of modern poetry will derive great benefit from this vigorous and lucid analysis of Pound's masterpiece. Noel Stock's finding is radical: that The Cantos is not a really a poem at all, but rather notes towards a poem. It is a collection of fragments of varying quality - some of extraordinary power and beauty - but in no sense formed into a work of art.

In this volume, Eobanus Hessus turns from passionate Erasmian into staunch defender of Luther, only to find himself caught in the no-man's-land between the two titans. Under Erasmus' spell, he writes "Itinerary of My Journey to Erasmus," "On the Restoration of Studies at Erfurt," epigrams against Edward Lee, and "Short Preface to the 'Enchiridion.'" Changing course in 1521, he publishes "Elegies in Praise and Defense of Luther" and "Letter of the Afflicted Church to Luther." Thereafter, amid tumults and academic collapse, he battles the radical preachers in "Some Letters of Illustrious Men Concerning the More Humane Studies" and "Three Dialogues." Two elegies serve as intermezzos: a "Consolation" to the imprisoned William of Brunswick and a patriotic "Invective" against Johannes Dantiscus.

Sites of the Uncanny: Paul Celan, Specularity and the Visual Arts is the first book-length study that examines Celan's impact on visual culture. Exploring poetry's relation to film, painting and architecture, this study tracks the transformation of Celan in postwar German culture and shows the extent to which his poetics accompany the country's memory politics after the Holocaust. The book posits a new theoretical model of the Holocaustal uncanny -evolving out of a crossing between Celan, Freud, Heidegger and Levinas - that provides a map for entering other modes of Holocaust representations. After probing Celan's critique of the uncanny in Heidegger, this study shifts to the translation of Celan's uncanny poetics in Resnais' film Night and Fog, Kiefer's art and Libeskind's architecture.

This bibliography provides a comprehensive record of verse drama in modern literature. The volume begins with an introduction, which discusses the significance of verse drama in modern theater, and which overviews the history and intent of modern verse drama. The bibliography that follows provides entries for more than 500 plays written in verse or in verse and prose between 1935 and 1992. Included are works by renowned playwrights such as T.S. Eliot, Christopher Fry, and John Arden, as well as plays by lesser-known dramatists. The plays are organized alphabetically by the name of the author. Included are anthologies of plays as well. Each entry is accompanied by an annotation that succinctly overviews the major themes and significance of the work. Title and subject index conclude the reference.

Throughout their marriage, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes engaged in a complex and continually evolving poetic dialogue about writing, love, and grief. Although scholars have commented extensively on the biographical details of Plath's and Hughes's marriage, few have undertaken a systematic intertextual analysis of the poets' work. The Grief of Influence reappraises this extraordinary literary partnership, and shows that the aesthetic and ideological similarities that provided a foundation for Plath's and Hughes's creative marriage - such as their mutual fascination with D. H. Lawrence and motifs of violence and war - intensified their artistic rivalry. Through close readings of both poets' work and analysis of new archival sources, Clark reveals for the first time how extensively Plath borrowed from Hughes and Hughes borrowed from Plath. She also explores the transatlantic dynamics of Plath's and Hughes's 'colonial' marriage within the context of the 1950s Anglo-American poetry scene and demonstrates how each poet's misreadings of the other contributed to the damaging stereotypes that now dominate the Plath-Hughes mythology. Following Plath and Hughes through alternating periods of collaboration and competition, The Grief of Influence shows how each poet forged a voice both through and against the other's, and offers a new assessment of the twentieth century's most important poetic partnership.