A clear introductory account of the work of Geoffrey Hill, one of the finest but also most complex of contemporary British poets. Geoffrey Hill is widely regarded as one of the finest British poets of our time. His highly distinctive poetry is unrivalled in its historical scope, philosophical depth and rhetorical power, and joins intense ethical seriousness with wit, ambiguity and humour. In his own terms a 'radically traditional poet', Hill combines religious modes of thought with rigorous scepticism and, while insisting on the importance of the past to an understanding of the present, reveals the constructed nature of historical discourses. His poetry eschews 'self-expression' yet explores the complexity of selfhood. Hill's unusual subject-matter, formal richness and dense, allusive style have often led to his work being read in isolation from contemporary culture.In this clear but subtle discussion of Hill's poetry, Andrew Roberts combines close reading of poems with review of critical debates on this unique and often controversial figure in contemporary literature, so as to do justice to Hill's achievement whilst stressing its connection with contemporary theoretical and cultural issues.

An exploration of the legacy of The Waste Land on the centenary of its original publication, looking at the impact it had had upon criticism and new poetries across one hundred years. T. S. Eliot first published his long poem The Waste Land in 1922. The revolutionary nature of the work was immediately recognised, and it has subsequently been acknowledged as one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century, and as crucial for the understanding of modernism. The essays in this collection variously reflect on The Waste Land one hundred years after its original publication. At this centenary moment, the contributors both celebrate the richness of the work, its sounds and rare use of language, and also consider the poem's legacy in Britain, Ireland, and India. The work here, by an international team of writers from the UK, North America, and India, deploys a range of approaches. Some contributors seek to re-read the poem itself in fresh and original ways; others resist the established drift of previous scholarship on the poem, and present new understandings of the process of its development through its drafts, or as an orchestration on the page. Several contributors question received wisdom about the poem's immediate legacy in the decade after publication, and about the impact that it has had upon criticism and new poetries across the first century of its existence. An Introduction to the volume contextualises the poem itself, and the background to the essays. All pieces set out to review the nature of our understanding of the poem, and to bring fresh eyes to its brilliance, one hundred years on. Contributors: Rebecca Beasley, Rosinka Chaudhuri, William Davies, Hugh Haughton, Marjorie Perloff, Andrew Michael Roberts, Peter Robinson, Michael Wood.

Joseph Conrad is a key figure in modernist fiction, whose innovative work engages with many of the crucial philosophical, moral and political concerns of the twentieth century. This collection of major critical readings of his work is arranged according to the issues which each critic addresses, issues which are of crucial importance, and in many cases remain controversial, within contemporary literary theory and criticism.
Following an opening section on the critical tradition, indicating how the study of Conrad's work has been politicised since the 1970s, there are sections on 'Narrative, Textuality and Interpretation', 'Imperialism', 'Gender and Sexuality', 'Class and Ideology', and 'Modernity'. Within each section two or three critical excerpts offer contrasting and complementary accounts of the fiction, while the headnotes to each piece and the introduction place these excerpts within the wider critical debate, clarifying for the reader both the theoretical issues and the interpretation of Conrad's fiction. A glossary of terms and a bibliography categorised by critical approach complete a volume which will provide an invaluable resource for students of Conrad and twentieth-century literature as well as other readers of Conrad's work.

"In one of his final publications, Geoffrey Hill asserts his commitment to 'the strangeness and the power of poetry'. The words accord with many readers' responses to Hill's own poetry. It is generally seen as 'powerful', in rhetorical, formal, intellectual and emotional terms, and is much concerned with issues of political and aesthetic power. ... 'Strangeness' may here stand for the remarkable distinctiveness of his poetry, which over more than sixty years, from the mid-1950s to his death in 2016, followed a trajectory of development and innovation which engaged in unique ways with many of the crucial questions in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century poetics: the lyrical and the anti-lyrical, Romantic, Modernist and earlier inheritances; form and formal innovation; the personal and the impersonal; history and ethics. But more than that, the word suggests the way in which that poetry is somehow 'strange' and much concerned with strangeness, in both negative and positive terms: estrangement, peculiarity, revelation. Hill's writing fulfils to a high degree the Russian Futurist aim of 'making strange' the familiar, as well as bringing to the reader's attention, through its learning and allusion, aspects of history and culture which are likely to be unfamiliar to many. For some readers, Hill's late work in particular is simply too 'strange' too resistant to reading and understanding. Both his admirers and his detractors, and those who come somewhere between, might acknowledge qualities of strangeness, even that if judgment would carry different implications and values in each case. A number of essays in this volume pair Hill with another poet, or poets, to consider his 'strange likeness' with contemporaries and predecessors." --from the editor's Introduction to this volume

Joseph Conrad is a key figure in modernist fiction, whose innovative work engages with many of the crucial philosophical, moral and political concerns of the twentieth century. This collection of major critical readings of his work is arranged according to the issues which each critic addresses, issues which are of crucial importance, and in many cases remain controversial, within contemporary literary theory and criticism. Following an opening section on the critical tradition, indicating how the study of Conrad's work has been politicised since the 1970s, there are sections on 'Narrative, Textuality and Interpretation', 'Imperialism', 'Gender and Sexuality', 'Class and Ideology', and 'Modernity'. Within each section two or three critical excerpts offer contrasting and complementary accounts of the fiction, while the headnotes to each piece and the introduction place these excerpts within the wider critical debate, clarifying for the reader both the theoretical issues and the interpretation of Conrad's fiction. A glossary of terms and a bibliography categorised by critical approach complete a volume which will provide an invaluable resource for students of Conrad and twentieth-century literature as well as other readers of Conrad's work.