York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. The Medicamina Faciei Femineae is a didactic elegy which showcases an early example of Ovid's trademark combination of a moralistic, instructive form and trivial subject and meter. Exploring female beauty and cosmetics, with particular emphasis on the concept of 'cultus', the poem also presents five practical recipes for cosmetic treatments used by Roman women. Covering both didactic parody and pharmacological reality, this deceptively complex poem possesses wit, vivacity and importance. The first full study devoted to this little-researched but multi-faceted poem, Ovid on Cosmetics includes an in-depth introduction which situates the poem within its literary heritage of didactic and elegiac poetry, its place in Ovid's oeuvre and its relevance to social values, personal aesthetics and attitudes to female beauty in Roman society. The Latin text is presented on parallel pages alongside a new literal and quality translation, and all Latin phrases are translated for the non-specialist reader. Detailed commentary notes elucidate the text and individual phrases still further.The volume also contains related passages with translations and commentaries from Ovid's Ars Amatoria 3.101-250, on dress, appearance and make-up, and Amores 1.114, on hair dye and resulting baldness.Ovid on Cosmetics presents and explicates this witty, subversive yet significant poem, as well as contextualises its importance for gender and sexuality studies, women's life in antiquity, eroticism, aesthetics and social attitudes to women and beauty in Ancient Rome.

The contributors analyze Whitman's life and work as a reflection of his concerns for such societal issues as war and peace, women's rights, and the threat of slavery to American democracy, as well as a reflection of more personal issues of sexual preference and familial ties. Each of these and many other topics receive careful consideration and attention by scholars who have devoted much of their professional lives to aspects of Whitman's life and work.

The English poet John Gower (ca. 1340-1408) wrote important Latin poems witnessing the two crucial political events of his day: the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and in 1399 the deposition of Richard II, in the Visio Anglie (A Vision of England) and Cronica tripertita (A Chronicle in Three Parts), respectively. Both poems, usually transmitted with Gower's major Latin work, Vox clamantis, are key primary sources for the historical record, as well as marking culminating points in the development of English literature. The earlier Visio Anglie is verbally derivative of numerous, varied sources, by way of its literary allusions, but is also highly original in its invention and disposition. On the other hand, the Cronica tripertita's organization, even in details, is highly derivative, and from a single source, but its verbal texture is all invented. This volume includes Latin texts of these poems of Gower, newly established from the manuscripts, with commentary on Gower's relation with the rest of the contemporary historical record and with his literary forebears and contemporaries, including Ovid, Virgil, Peter Riga, Nigel Witeker, and Godfrey of Viterbo. This volume also includes Modern English verse translations of the two poems, which are at once critically accurate and enjoyably accessible.

This is a pioneering scholarly collection of essays outlining W.B. Yeats' reception and influence in Europe. The intellectual and cultural impact of British and Irish writers cannot be assessed without reference to their reception in European countries. These essays, prepared by an international team of scholars, critics and translators, record the ways in which W. B. Yeats has been translated, evaluated and emulated in different national and linguistic areas of continental Europe. There is a remarkable split between the often politicized reception in Eastern European countries and Spain on the one hand, and the more sober scholarly response in Western Europe. Yeats's Irishness and the pre-eminence of his lyrical work have posed continuous challenges. Three further essays describe the widely divergent reactions to Yeats in his native Ireland, during his lifetime and up to the most recent years. Our knowledge of British and Irish authors is incomplete and inadequate without an understanding of the perspectives of other nations, traditions and individuals on them. This series profiles literary and political figures as well as philosophers, historians and scientists. Each volume examines how authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed and discussed in Europe. In doing so it throws light not only on the specific strands of intellectual and cultural history but also on the processes involved in the dissemination of ideas.

This is a monograph offering new analysis of the philosophical connection between Hopkins and Heidegger which has been repeatedly mentioned but not fleshed out in the literature of either literary criticism or philosophy. "Hopkins & Heidegger" is a new exploration of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetics through the work of Martin Heidegger. More radically, Brian Willems argues that the work of Hopkins does no less than propose solutions to a number of hitherto unresolved questions regarding Heidegger's later writings, vitalizing the concepts of both writers beyond their local contexts. Willems examines a number of cross-sections between the poetry and thought of Hopkins and the philosophy of Heidegger. While neither writer ever directly addressed the other's work - Hopkins died the year Heidegger was born, 1899, and Heidegger never turns his thoughts on poetry to the Victorians - a number of similarities between the two have been noted but never fleshed out. Willems' readings of these cross-sections are centred on Hopkins' concepts of 'inscape' and 'instress' and around Heidegger's reading of both appropriation (Ereignis) and the fourfold (das Geviert). This study will be of interest to scholars and postgraduates in both Victorian literature and Continental philosophy.

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes ("wise ones") produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede's description of Caedmon's production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian "Golden Age", its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.

A recent upsurge in interest in Der Struwwelpeter, written by Heinrich Hoffman has initiated a new wave of spin-offs, parodies, and retellings of these immensely popular stories. Hoffman's style, which is instructive and moralistic, coupled with the sadistic content of his works lend a unique quality to the stories that we don't see in contemporary children's literature. Struwwelpeter: Humor or Horror? is a critical analysis of the now infamous Struwwelpeter stories. While Hoffman intended his depictions of amputated limbs and burning children to be humorous and to warn children against misbehavior, some find the punishments can be excessively vicious. Looking beyond the history of child rearing practices and children's literature, Barbara Smith Chalou considers the socio-historic context in which the book was written and makes comparisons to contemporary children's fare that is similarly violent, but intended to be humorous.

Jimi Hendrix, Princess Diana and Syria's Asma Al-Assad rub shoulders with Auden, Eliot and Shelley - and with the Trouser Thief Clive met during ten long weeks locked up in a closed psychiatric ward - in this offbeat and affectionate poetic biography. Since 2010, when Clive was told he had three separate life-threatening conditions, he has poured out a stream of fine poems - sometimes light, witty and paradoxical, sometimes sad, heartfelt and regretful. Some, like `Japanese Maple', an instant Internet sensation, have already made it into the anthologies. Others, like his book-length epic, The River in the Sky, are more demanding. All are packed with the unexpected ideas, inventive imagery and breathtaking wordplay that have helped him achieve his avowed ambition of becoming `a fairly major minor poet'.

A beautiful and inspiring collection of poetry by Maya Angelou, author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS and 'a brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' (BARACK OBAMA). 'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya Angelou Maya Angelou's poetry - lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful - speaks of love, longing, partings; of Saturday night partying, and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams. 'Her poetry is just as much a part of her autobiography as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and the volumes that follow.' Kirkus 'It is true poetry she is writing . . . it has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity' M. F. K. Fisher

Poet, critic, biographer and Catholic intellectual, Paul Mariani delivers huge armfuls of experience and knowledge in this wide-ranging collection of twenty-four essays. As a man of faith in a secular world, Mariani brings to light issues surrounding spirituality and poetry through discussions of the Gnostics, Roman history, the Bible, John of the Cross, Rilke, Robert Pack, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, and the poets he most admires - Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell. Charged with spiritual and intellectual awe, Mariani fully engages with his subjects, from their lives to their works to their grand impact on Mariani's own life as a poet. His prose flows easily from anecdote to analysis, from Paterson, the setting of Williams's great tribute poem, to Manhattan, where Mariani haunts old neighborhoods and the Brooklyn Bridge, searching for traces of Hart Crane. By infusing scholarly criticism with a personal voice, Mariani allows us to see the relationship between poetry and a sublime presence in the universe. Serious reading for anyone interested in modern and contemporary poetry, God and the Imagination offers elegant and original insights into a wide variety of poetic concerns. But it is most extraordinary for its celebration of the lives of the poets, which allow us, in Mariani's words, ""to recover what would otherwise be lost to time and silence.

Conceived in 1976 and published in 1980, LEGEND exemplifies the political and linguistic commitments of then-nascent Language writing. Coauthored by Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffery, and Ron Silliman, the work was composed on typewriters and developed through the mail. The twenty-six poems of the volume bring together every possible permutation of collaborative authorship in one-, two-, three-, and five-author combinations, revealing the evolution of distinctive styles against and in conversation with others. Along with a complete reproduction of the original text, LEGEND: The Complete Facsimile in Context includes a critical introduction by editors Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston, a generous selection of material from the authors' correspondence, and a new collaborative piece by the authors. This book will be an essential resource to students and scholars in twentieth-century poetry and poetics.

Unstated meaning has always been a feature of poetry, but it is in our own century that it has established itself not only as the prevailing mode of expression but also as the central concern of analytic criticism. Although a variety of terms, such as Ambiguity, Irony and Gesture, have been employed to discuss this aspect of poetry and have gained popularity, Professor Rayan shows that 'Suggestion', occurring as far back as in Edgar Allan Poe's writings and later in Symbolist theorizing, is a concept of much longer standing and of equal serviceability. In examining Suggestion, particularly as the only mode of presentation of emotion, he makes fruitful use of some central ideas from ninth-century Sanskrit aesthetics. The contrasted techniques of Suggestion and Statement are studied in relation to each other and with reference to many poetic examples, past and present.

Matthew Arnold, the foremost Victorian 'man of letters', forged a unique literary career, first as an important post-Romantic poet and then as a prose writer who profoundly influenced the formation of modern literary and cultural studies. Machann challenges the popular image of Arnold as an elitist intellectual and shows how his poetry and prose grew out of his personal life and his passionate engagement with the world, emphasizing the journal publications that drove his career as a literary, social, and religious critic.

Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning challenges the critical tendency to see Plath's writing in `confessional' terms, and draws attention to its self-reflexivity. The book argues that Plath developed a theatrical conception of the speaking subject. In her closely sustained study, Britzolakis relates the texts both to their historical moment and to contemporary debates about language, gender, and subjectivity.

Current norms of literary criticism tend to ignore ways in which literary experiences relate to life experience, and some ways in which literary experiences can be intensified and deepened. In this vibrant and controversial book, David Fuller seeks to recover the life in Shakespeare's sonnets, arguing that feeling and emotion, often ignored in criticism, should be central. He offers two ways of attempting this - first engaging with the poems through kinds of feeling fundamental to the young man sequence as presented in other kinds of writing and art - philosophy (Plato), poetry and visual art (Michelangelo), fiction (Mann), music (Britten), and film (Jarman). He then discusses reading the poems aloud, showing that dwelling in the words without translating them into other terms brings out their beauty and expressivity, and leads to fuller understanding of their form, structure, and meaning.

'I am inclined to think that we want new forms . . . as well as thoughts', confessed Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning in 1845. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry provides a closely-read appreciation of the vibrancy and variety of Victorian poetic forms, and attends to poems as both shaped and shaping forces. The volume is divided into four main sections. The first section on 'Form' looks at a few central innovations and engagements--'Rhythm', 'Beat', 'Address', 'Rhyme', 'Diction', 'Syntax', and 'Story'. The second section, 'Literary Landscapes', examines the traditions and writers (from classical times to the present day) that influence and take their bearings from Victorian poets. The third section provides 'Readings' of twenty-three poets by concentrating on particular poems or collections of poems, offering focused, nuanced engagements with the pleasures and challenges offered by particular styles of thinking and writing. The final section, 'The Place of Poetry', conceives and explores 'place' in a range of ways in order to situate Victorian poetry within broader contexts and discussions: the places in which poems were encountered; the poetic representation and embodiment of various sites and spaces; the location of the 'Victorian' alongside other territories and nationalities; and debates about the place - and displacement - of poetry in Victorian society. This Handbook is designed to be not only an essential resource for those interested in Victorian poetry and poetics, but also a landmark publication--a provocative, seminal volume that will offer a lasting contribution to future studies in the area.

This book is the first collection of essays on the British prose poem. With essays by leading academics, critics and practitioners, the book traces the British prose poem's unsettled history and reception in the UK as well as its recent popularity. The essays cover the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries exploring why this form is particularly suited to the modern age and yet can still be problematic for publishers, booksellers and scholars. Refreshing perspectives are given on the Romantics, Modernists and Post-Modernists, among them Woolf, Beckett and Eliot as well as more recent poets like Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Claudia Rankine, Jeremy Over and Vahni Capildeo. British Prose Poetry moves from a contextual overview of the genre's early volatile and fluctuating status, through to crucial examples of prose poetry written by established Modernist, surrealist and contemporary writers. Key questions around boundaries are discussed more generally in terms of race, class and gender. The British prose poem's international heritage, influences and influence are explored throughout as an intrinsic part of its current renaissance.

Poetry's relevancy as a tool for social and political change continues to be overlooked in a global context. Looking to writers as diverse as Derek Walcott, Paul Muldoon, and Daljit Nagra, Hena shows that poets throughout the world have reinvigorated older poetic traditions to address political realities and the sweeping pressures of modernity.

Ezra Pound transformed his style of poetry when he wrote The Adams Cantos in the 1920s. But what caused him to rethink his earlier writing techniques? Grounded in archival material, this study explores the extent to which Pound's poetry changed in response to his reading of 17th-century American History and the social climate of the pre-war period. Drawing on the Ezra Pound papers, David Ten Eyck documents the changes to Pound's documentary techniques, establishing a chronology of the composition of The Cantos. His close readings of specific passages, set against the interwar years, allow Ten Eyck to gain insights into Pound's 1930s political and social criticism. Through references to the annotated copy of The Works of John Adams, he explores Pound's engagement with Adams at the expense of Thomas Jefferson: a figure formally at the heart of his previous work. Ultimately, this contextual and archival study uses John Adams and America to unlock the fascist beliefs and the later poetry of Ezra Pound.

Considered by many to be the greatest Irish song poet of her generation, Maire Bhui Ni Laeire (Yellow Mary O'Leary; 1774-1848) was an illiterate woman unconnected to elite literary and philosophical circles who powerfully engaged the politics of her own society through song. As an oral arts practitioner, Maire Bhui composed songs whose ecstatic, radical vision stirred her community to revolt and helped to shape nineteenth-century Irish anti-colonial thought. This provocative and richly theorized study explores the re-creative, liminal aspect of song, treating it as a performative social process that cuts to the very root of identity and thought formation, thus re-imagining the history of ideas in society.

'York Notes Advanced' offer an accessible approach to English Literature. This series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, 'York Notes Advanced' introduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

This Reader's Guide charts the reception history of Ted Hughes' poetry from his first to last published collection, culminating in posthumous tributes and assessments of his lifetime achievement. Sandie Byrne explores the criticism relating to key issues such as nature, myth, the Laureateship, and Hughes' relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Retrospect gathers fifteen essays by noted scholars in the fields of Latin American literature, politics, and theater. The volume offers broad overviews of the Colombian author's total body of work, along with closer looks at some of his acknowledged masterpieces. The Nobel laureate's cultural contexts and influences, his variety of themes, and his formidable legacy (Hispanic, U.S., world-wide) all come up for consideration. New readings of One Hundred Years of Solitude are further complemented by fresh, stimulating, highly detailed examinations of his later novels (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth, Of Love and Other Demons) and stories (Strange Pilgrims). Further attention is focused on "Gabo's" labors as journalist and as memoirist (Living to Tell the Tale), and to his sometime relationships with the cinema and the stage. Reactions to his enormous stature on the part of younger writers, including recent signs of backlash, are also given thoughtful scrutiny. Feminist and ecocritical interpretations, plus lively discussions of Gabo's artful use of humor, character's names, and even cuisine, are to be found here as well. In the wake of Garcia Marquez's passing away in 2014, this collection of essays serves as a fitting tribute to one of the world's greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms