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The second of two studies devoted to the interrelations of poetry
and prose fiction, this volume examines the origins, development
and flowering of the verse novel as a literary hybrid. While the
first study was concerned with the different ways in which
novelists have incorporated poetry into their fictions, what is
analysed here is the manner in which poets have adopted novelistic
genres and techniques and adapted these to the prosodic
requirements of rhyming, blank and free verse in order to produce
original literary blends. The novel may thus acquire a fresh
dimension by being re-immersed in its original verse narrative
sources and poetry be rendered more accessible to a wider reading
public. Beginning with Pushkin, who was the first to coin the term
"verse novel" to describe his masterpiece Eugene Onegin, the first
section of this study considers a number of nineteenth-century
Romantic and Victorian verse narratives, as well as some
mid-twentieth-century experimental works, which can be seen to have
contributed to the rise of the verse novel. The second, much
longer, section concentrates on the period 1980-2010, which
witnessed the full fruition of the verse novel as a multicultural
fictional genre. A selection of some two dozen verse novels from
this period, notably those by Anthony Burgess, Anne Carson, Glyn
Maxwell, Les Murray, Vikram Seth and Derek Walcott, are discussed
in terms of both their novelistic and their prosodic merits.
Taking up Virginia Woolf's provocative claim that "the best prose
is that which is most full of poetry", this study examines the
different ways in which novelists have incorporated poetry into the
fabric of their fictions. The inclusion of poems in a novel may
serve a variety of purposes: to heighten the atmosphere, to
represent a character's sensations and thoughts as "stream of
consciousness", to illustrate a protagonist's creative output, to
provide an explicit or embedded literary illusion, to function as
an interlude or structural divider, or to create an unclassifiable
literary hybrid that highlights an author's dual talents. To
illustrate these and other forms of integration, twenty-two works
of prose fiction are analysed under five headings: textual
composites that combine prose, poetry and poetic prose to achieve
original effects; apprenticeship novels about the development of
fictive poets and their work; fictions concerned with the
investigation and appropriation of a dead poet's opus; works in
which a single long poem constitutes a novel's principal focus; and
research-based biofictions relating particular events in the lives
of real poets. Intended to stimulate reflection on the
interrelations of prose and poetry, this book works against
literary compartmentalization by revealing how poetry can enhance
prose narrative and how the novel can bring poetry to the notice of
a wider reading public.
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Paperback
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R398
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