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
Results 1-5 of 26
Page 1
... Romantic period : I look at the way poets from Wordsworth to Auden try to present themselves si- multaneously as persons of power and as participating members of their communities , able to speak on public issues . In my account , the ...
... Romantic period : I look at the way poets from Wordsworth to Auden try to present themselves si- multaneously as persons of power and as participating members of their communities , able to speak on public issues . In my account , the ...
Page 3
... Romantic (especially modern) poetry. At the very least, the low register can be a thread through the labyrinth of Modernism or, to pick a slightly different metaphor, a way of diag- nosing the hidden motives and justifications of ...
... Romantic (especially modern) poetry. At the very least, the low register can be a thread through the labyrinth of Modernism or, to pick a slightly different metaphor, a way of diag- nosing the hidden motives and justifications of ...
Page 5
... Romantic and Modern poetry. This relation has been a matter of bitter debate since the time of Yeats and Eliot, a debate that has, if anything, intensified in recent decades. The mutually hostile camps into which most crit- ics have ...
... Romantic and Modern poetry. This relation has been a matter of bitter debate since the time of Yeats and Eliot, a debate that has, if anything, intensified in recent decades. The mutually hostile camps into which most crit- ics have ...
Page 6
... romantics—chose for theme .... ... .... ... .... ... .... ... .... ... . whatever most can bless The mind of man or elevate a rhyme; But all is ... Romantic period itself, and of Wordsworth specifically , that I believe to be Introduction 6.
... romantics—chose for theme .... ... .... ... .... ... .... ... .... ... . whatever most can bless The mind of man or elevate a rhyme; But all is ... Romantic period itself, and of Wordsworth specifically , that I believe to be Introduction 6.
Page 7
... Romantic sentimentality and " rumination " ; Modernism is indeed anti - Romanticism . As one might expect , Pound echoes Eliot's point without Eliot's sobriety . An appraisal of Wordsworth : “ He was a silly old sheep with a genius , an ...
... Romantic sentimentality and " rumination " ; Modernism is indeed anti - Romanticism . As one might expect , Pound echoes Eliot's point without Eliot's sobriety . An appraisal of Wordsworth : “ He was a silly old sheep with a genius , an ...
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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Common terms and phrases
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