Bringing a fresh approach to the field, this study shows that poems by women do not always subvert the mainstream, the media, and the marketplace. With explorations of both Hollywood films, household advertising, children's books, mass magazines, and tabloid journalism as well as the poetry of H.D., Stevie Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Ai, and Carol Ann Duffy, Marsha Bryant assesses the counterintuitive innovations that these poets fashion through popular culture. Bridging feminist and cultural studies, this book analyzes the ways in which British and American women poets often operate as cultural insiders, consuming music, movies, and magazines through poems that do not always conform to appropriation or critique.

Contrary to the monolithic impression left by postcolonial theories of Orientalism, the book makes the case that Orientals did not exist solely to be gazed at. Hermes shows that there was no shortage of medieval Muslims who cast curious eyes towards the European Other and that more than a handful of them were interested in Europe.

Ezra Pound belatedly conceded that T.S.Eliot "was the true Dantescan voice" of the modern world. This is the first study to deal with this assertion and the relationship between the two poets. It attempts to show how Dante's total vision impinges on Eliot's craft and thought. Eliot's indebtedness to his Italian master, whose poetry he deemed "as the most persistent and deepest influence" upon his own verse, manifests itself in a variety of literary strategies, including imitation, parody, citation and allusion. At the same time Eliot's debt transcends the literary to embrace Dante's total vision, or his philosophy, theology and politics. Various aspects of Eliot's recourse to Dante's craft and thought may appear in a new light - his recurring fascination with Ulysses in "Inferno XXVI" and especially with Arnaut Daniel in "Purgatorio XXVI"; the exodus motif as it informs "The Waste Land", "The Hollow Men" and "Ash Wednesday"; the metaphor of Dante's book of memory as it applies to Eliot's work; the notion of order in its ethical, aesthetic and political dimensions. Finally, light is shed on some of the reasons why Eliot's Dante ultimately differs radically from that of the other mod

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Opus Maximum, written in the early 1820s and first published in 2002, is a challenge to every scholar who has encountered it. Sublime Coleridge offers an entry point to this important text of British Romanticism, with a reader's guide and background information. Murray J. Evans introduces each major theme of the Opus Maximum--the Will, divine ideas, human subjectivity, and the Trinity--and shows their importance in explaining Coleridge's ideas about religion, psychology, and the sublime.

The funeral elegy is in some ways the quintessential English Renaissance genre. This book demonstrates how the hospitality of elegy to different styles, genres and modes, alongside the primary formal obligation to fit the poem decorously to the subject, gave a special value to ingenuity. The elegist, like the sonneteer, had to prove (or at least protest) that the ingenuity was grounded in the subject and not merely indulged in as a species of self-advertisement or display. By the time Milton came to write "Lycidas", the vernacular funeral elegy had developed into a form - or rather a variety of possible forms - in which any educated person could perform. For younger poets the elegy eventually constituted a kind of laboratory in which they could put into notice what they had learned about composition. It also became, during the period covered in this study, a means of learning about decorum, of investigating, exploring, analyzing, representing, anatomizing social (and political) relationships on the occasion of the subject's death. "Melodious Tears" charts the history of the elegy from the time in the mid-16th century when it was exclusively the province of professional writers, the

Tackling topics such as globalization and political activism, this book traces engaged poetics in 20th century American poetry. Spahr provides a comprehensive view of activist poetry, starting with the Great Depression and the Harlem Renaissance and moving to the Beats and contemporary writers such as Amiri Baraka and Mark Nowak.

Dylan Thomas' work has been both over and under-rated. Peter Davies goes behind Thomas' overt poetizing to discriminate those poems that are of enduring interest. Peter Davies is Senior Obituaries Writer at 'The Time' and author of 'William Blake', 'The Brontes' and editor for this 'Greenwich Exchange' series.

Paradise Dislocated offers a radical rereading of William Morris's neglected masterpiece, The Earthly Paradise. While most critics have seen this poem as the antithesis of the radical socialist politics that Morris embraced later in his career, or, at best, as an awkward prelude to that later development, Jeffrey Skoblow proposes that The Earthly Paradise is in fact central to Morris's political vision-indeed, it is the most radical manifestation of that vision. Paradise Dislocated explores the problematic relations between critical thought, art, utopian aspirations, and dystopian realities. It proposes a revaluation of Morris's poem and of his career as a whole, as well as a judgement upon the possibilities (and impossibilities) of imaginative and cultural criticism at Morris's moment-and at our own.

Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens was a cosmopolitan Dutch physician and Latin poet of the eighteenth century. A Catholic, he was in many ways an outsider on his own turf, the peat country of Protestant Groningen, and looked to Voltaire's Paris, as much as Ovid, in exile, had looked to Rome. An indefatigable traveller and networker, Heerkens mixed freely with philosophers, physicians, churchmen, and antiquarians. This book reconstructs his Latin works and networks, and reveals in the process a virtually unexplored corner of eighteenth-century culture, the 'Latin Enlightenment'.

Percy Shelley is widely considered one of the most important Romantic poets of the 19th Century and was a key influence on the Victorian and pre-Raphaelite poets in the century following his death in 1822. However, for many years his writing was largely ignored in the mainstream due to the radical politics he espoused and it is only in relatively recent times he has become universally admired. Routledge Library Editions: Percy Shelley collects a broad range of scholarship ranging from examinations of Shelley's style and political intentions to an assessment of his impact on the broader Romantic Movement. This set reissues 4 books on Percy Shelley originally published between 1945 and 2009 and will be of interest to students of literature and literary history.

This book is an analysis of the sonnet in the English Renaissance. It especially traces the relations between Shakespeare's sonnets and the ways in which other writers use the form. It looks at how the poetry fits into the historical situation at the time, with regard to images of the family and of women. Its explorationi of these issues is informed by much recent work in critical theory, which it tries to make as accessible as possible.

The most influential East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchange that has taken place in modern and postmodern times was the reading and writing of haiku. Richard Wright wrote over four thousand haiku, Alice Walker's work reflects her affinity for Zen philosophy, and Ishmael Reed's work includes a discussion of Eastern thought. Here, esteemed contributors investigate the impact of Eastern philosophy and religion on African American writers from Richard Wright to Ralph Ellison to Ishmael Reed and Charles Johnson, offering a fresh field of literary inquiry.

First published in 1982, this book provides a descriptive and comparative study of some of the fundamental structural aspects of modernist poetic writing in English, French and German in the first decades of the twentieth century. The work concerns itself primarily with basic structural elements and techniques and the assumptions that underlie and determine the modernist mode of poetic writing. Particular attention is paid to the theories developed by authors and to the essential 'principles of construction' that shape the structure of their poetry. Considering the work of a number of modernist poets, Theo Hermans argues that the various widely divergent forms and manifestations of modernistic poetry writing can only be properly understood as part of one general trend.

This set reissues 10 books on T. S. Eliot originally published between 1952 and 1991. The volumes examine many of Eliot's most respected works, including his Four Quartets and The Waste Land. As well as exploring Eliot's work, this collection also provides a comprehensive analysis of the man behind the poetry, particularly in Frederick Tomlin's T. S. Eliot: A Friendship. This set will be of particular interest to students of literature.

Explores the representation of emotions as psychological concepts and cultural constructs in Geoffrey Chaucer's narrative poetry. McTaggart argues that Chaucer's main works including The Canterbury Tales are united thematically in their positive view of guilt and in their anxiety about the desire for sacrifice and vengeance that shame can provoke.

The book series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, founded by Gustav Groeber in 1905, is among the most renowned publications in Romance Studies. It covers the entire field of Romance linguistics, including the national languages as well as the lesser studied Romance languages. The editors welcome submissions of high-quality monographs and collected volumes on all areas of linguistic research, on medieval literature and on textual criticism. The publication languages of the series are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian as well as German and English. Each collected volume should be as uniform as possible in its contents and in the choice of languages.

Dominic Rainsford examines ways in which literary texts may seem to comment on their authors' ethical status. Its argument develops through readings of Blake, Dickens, and Joyce, three authors who find especially vivid ways of casting doubt on their own moral authority, at the same time as they expose wider social ills. The book combines its interest in ethics with post-structuralist scepticism, and thus develops a type of radical humanism with applications far beyond the three authors immediately discussed.

This volume on Blake follows the writer's life and combines biography and critical analysis. Covering Blake's early career, his major works and his work as a visual artist, this new study will be a must for all Blake scholars and enthusiasts. Recent discoveries concerning Blake's forebears and their religion make this new study additionally timely.

"Shelley's German Afterlives "traces the German reception of P.B. Shelley over a time-span of nearly 200 years, considering material as diverse as anthologies, journals, biographies, poetic imitations, translations. If German readers of the 1830s and 1840s were initially fascinated by Shelley's life and death, interest in the lyrical and the political Shelley set in soon, too. "Men of England" became the model for one of the most popular German working class poems by Herwegh. In the context of the "fin de siecle" and of expressionism, Shelley's Faustian characters--Cenci and Prometheus--received acclaim.

This book provides an analytical understanding of some of Tagore's most contested and celebrated works and ideas. It reflects on his critique of nationalism, aesthetic worldview, and the idea of 'surplus in man' underlying his life and works. It discusses the creative notion of surplus that stands not for 'profit' or 'value', but for celebrating human beings' continuous quest for reaching out beyond one's limits. It highlights, among other themes, how the idea of being 'Indian' involves stages of evolution through a complex matrix of ideals, values and actions-cultural, historical, literary and ideological. Examining the notion of the 'universal', contemporary scholars come together in this volume to show how 'surplus in man' is generated over the life of concrete particulars through creativity. The work brings forth a social scientific account of Tagore's thoughts and critically reconstructs many of his epochal ideas. Lucid in analysis and bolstered with historical reflection, this book will be a major intervention in understanding Tagore's works and its relevance for the contemporary human and social sciences. It will interest scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature and cultural studies.

Introducing students to the full range of critical approachesto the poetry of the period, Perspectives on World War I Poetry is an authoritative and accessible guide to the extraordinary variety of international poetic responses to the Great War of 1914-18. Each chapter covers one or more major poets, and guides the reader through close readings of poems from a full range of theoretical perspectives, including: . Classical . Formalist . Psychoanalytic . Marxist . Structuralist . Reader-response . New Historicist . Feminist Including the full text of each poem discussed and poetry from British, North American and Commonwealth writers, the book explores the work of such poets as: Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, Alys Fane Trotter, Eva Dobell, Charlotte Mew, John McCrae, Edward Thomas, Eleanor Farjeon, Margaret Sackville, Sara Teasdale, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Teresa Hooley, Isaac Rosenberg, Leon Gellert, Marian Allen, Vera Brittain, Margaret Postgate Cole, Wilfred Owen, E.E. Cummings and David Jones.

Drawing on a series of new sources, this biography of Ezra Pound - the first to appear in more than a decade - outlines his contribution to modernism through a detailed account of his development, influence and continued significance. It pays special attention to his role in creating Imagism, Vorticism and the modern long poem, as well as his importance for Yeats, Joyce and Eliot. His roles as editor, translator and critic, plus his attempt to complete "The Cantos," are also studied.

"Wordsworth's verse and compelling criticism have shaped our understanding of poetic art since the Romantic period. This collection is the first in years to reexamine Wordsworth's complex theory of poetry in depth. Designed to be equally useful and inspiring, it provides much-needed reassessments of a vital juncture of Romantic creativity"--Provided by publisher.

The purpose of this series is to promote the study of writing in the English language through the introduction of the major figures writing in English throughout the ages. The books provide an analytical and historical framework for understanding their subjects. In this introduction to Wordworth's work, Andrew Keanie explores the poet's politics, his relationship with his sister Dorothy and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as his synthesis of poetry and philosophy, his startlingly modern strategy of image-building and quest for literary immortality. Keanie sifts through Wordworth's vast output to select those poems of enduring meaning, making clear his achievements.

Traditionally Hellenism is seen as the uncontroversial and beneficial influence of Greece upon later culture. Drawing upon new ideas from culture and gender theory, Jennifer Wallace rethinks the nature of classical influence and finds that the relationship between the modern west and Greece is one of anxiety, fascination and resistance. Shelley's protean and radical writing questions and illuminates the contemporary Romantic understanding of Greece. This book will appeal to students of Romantic Literature, as well as to those interested in the classical tradition.