Power, Plain English, and the Rise of Modern PoetryDIVIn this engaging book David Rosen offers a radically new account of Modern poetry and revises our understanding of its relation to Romanticism. British poets from Wordsworth to Auden attempted to present themselves simultaneously as persons of power and as moral voices in their communities. The modern lyric derives its characteristic complexities—psychological, ethical, formal—from the extraordinary difficulty of this effort. The low register of our language—a register of short, concrete, native words arranged in simple syntax—is deeply implicated in this story. Rosen shows how the peculiar reputation of “plain English” for truthfulness is employed by Modern poets to conceal the rift between their (probably irreconcilable) ambitions for themselves. With a deep appreciation for poetic accomplishment and a wonderful iconoclasm, Rosen sheds new light on the innovative as well as the self-deceptive aspects of Modern poetry. This book alters our understanding of the history of poetry in the English language./div |
From inside the book
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Page 12
... Locke, it does not conclude with Philosophical Investiga- tions.20 Wordsworth is drawing explicitly on Lockean ... Locke's Essay can be read fruitfully as a literary text, my analysis focuses on his arguments; it is these arguments ...
... Locke, it does not conclude with Philosophical Investiga- tions.20 Wordsworth is drawing explicitly on Lockean ... Locke's Essay can be read fruitfully as a literary text, my analysis focuses on his arguments; it is these arguments ...
Page 15
David Rosen. Chapter 1. Prologue. The. Secret. Reference. of. John. Locke. LANGUAGE DEBATES BEFORE LOCKE Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork'd animal as thou art. I begin my discussion of the ...
David Rosen. Chapter 1. Prologue. The. Secret. Reference. of. John. Locke. LANGUAGE DEBATES BEFORE LOCKE Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork'd animal as thou art. I begin my discussion of the ...
Page 21
... Locke attempts to salvage a workable theory of language . If his conclusions are not always convincing to his critics , they are of consequence for my larger argument . It is not my purpose to present an extended reading of Locke's ...
... Locke attempts to salvage a workable theory of language . If his conclusions are not always convincing to his critics , they are of consequence for my larger argument . It is not my purpose to present an extended reading of Locke's ...
Page 22
... Locke's first contribution as “a few commonsensical max- ims for the avoidance of 'jargon' very much in the spirit of [Francis Bacon].”10 The reasons for this dismissal are plain: the Essay deals with the materials and scope of human ...
... Locke's first contribution as “a few commonsensical max- ims for the avoidance of 'jargon' very much in the spirit of [Francis Bacon].”10 The reasons for this dismissal are plain: the Essay deals with the materials and scope of human ...
Page 23
... Locke's rhetoric: it is in the nature of man, a nature perhaps beyond our understanding, to communicate through lan- guage. Locke sounds, in this confidence, surprisingly close to the writers whose views of language his Essay supplanted ...
... Locke's rhetoric: it is in the nature of man, a nature perhaps beyond our understanding, to communicate through lan- guage. Locke sounds, in this confidence, surprisingly close to the writers whose views of language his Essay supplanted ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
33 | |
Certain Good W B Yeats and the Language of Autobiography | 73 |
The Lost Youth of Modern Poetry T S Eliot W H Auden | 123 |
Notes | 181 |
Index | 201 |
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argument autobiography beauty Beggar begins Book Cambridge career century chapter claims Cold Heaven Coleridge crisis critics culture decade diction early Essays experience feelings finally Freud Green Helmet Harold Bloom human identity idiom imagination Jarrell John John Keats Juvenilia XVIa Katherine Bucknell Keats kind landscape language late later Latinate lines Locke Locke's low register lyric M. H. Abrams mature Maud Gonne meaning memory metaphor mind modern poetry Modernist myth nature object Orwell passage perhaps period philosophical plain English poem poet poet’s poetic political Prelude prose psychology Randall Jarrell reality recognize rhetoric Romantic Romanticism seems sense Shelley simple ideas social speaker stanza style suggest T. S. Eliot theory things thought Tintern Abbey tion tradition truth turn understanding University Press verse verse paragraph vision visionary voice W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden Watershed William Wordsworth words Wordsworthian writing Yeats's York