Front Flap: Poet, essayist, actor, hymn-writer, wit, magazine
editor, transvestite stage performer: Christopher Smart, Georgian
don-turned-writer, was all of these. He was, and remains, a
mercurial individual, an idiosyncratic yet strangely familiar
writer of spiritual heights and material depths. His paradoxical
exuberance fascinates scholars of eighteenth-century culture, and
this collection of essays, a snapshot of current scholarship from
both new and established Smart scholars, offers, among others,
literary, theological, dramatic and philosophical perspectives on
his writing. Here are new ways of reading familiar Smart works -
including the astonishing, devout poem of his incarceration,
Jubilate Agno - and unfamiliar ones, such as his translations and
writing for children. Unexpected readers of Smart, from Coleridge
to a testy anonymous annotator, are examined, and Smart's sacred
translations and profane stage presence each find a place. Tom
Keymer's re-evaluating afterword finds the quality of "betweenness"
in Smart's work: between eras, between genres, between forms,
Smart's vitality demands reassessment for each new generation of
readers. Contributors: Karina Williamson, Min Wild, Rosalind
Powell, Fraser Easton, Clement Hawes, William E. Levine, Noel
Chevalier, Lori A. Branch, Daniel J. Ennis, Chris Mounsey, Debbie
Welham, Tom Keymer. Back Flap: The editors Min Wild's monograph
Christopher Smart and Satire on Smart's Midwife, was published in
2008, and various articles and reviews of a Smartian bent have
followed. Her interest in that eighteenth-century favorite, the
literary mode of prosopopoeia, has led her to investigate the
personification of words, texts and literary modes themselves. She
lectures in eighteenth-century literature and theory at Plymouth
University, UK, and reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and
elsewhere. Noel Chevalier is Associate Professor of English at
Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. He has published
articles on Jubilate Agno and on Smart's challenge to "legitimate"
playhouses in Mrs. Midnight's Oratory. Although his specialty lies
in the eighteenth century, his teaching and research cover a
diverse range of topics, from literary responses to the Bible, to
the roots of globalization, to literary representations of science
and scientists. He has helped create two interdisciplinary programs
at Luther: one which addresses literature for students in the
sciences, and one which explores the philosophical, political,
economic, and cultural contexts of globalization. Jacket
illustration: "Amaryllis sarniensis or Guernsey Amaryllis," from
William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden
Displayed, Vol. IX. No. 294. London, 1795.
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