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 21
Page 2
... cultural prejudice . To understand what I mean by “ plain English , " consider the following lines from King Lear : “ Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncover'd body this extremity of the skies . Is man no more than ...
... cultural prejudice . To understand what I mean by “ plain English , " consider the following lines from King Lear : “ Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncover'd body this extremity of the skies . Is man no more than ...
Page 3
... culture for some time. These grew out an argument between philosophy and rhetoric dat- ing back to Greece and Rome. As recounted by George Williamson, Wesley Trimpi, and others, Renaissance humanists, debating how a proper vernacular ...
... culture for some time. These grew out an argument between philosophy and rhetoric dat- ing back to Greece and Rome. As recounted by George Williamson, Wesley Trimpi, and others, Renaissance humanists, debating how a proper vernacular ...
Page 11
... cultures, could appre- ciate the crisis of modernity in the terms Clark describes, without desiring, like Yeats, to recover the lyric imagination.19 In general, American poets were faster than the British to follow Eliot into a poetry ...
... cultures, could appre- ciate the crisis of modernity in the terms Clark describes, without desiring, like Yeats, to recover the lyric imagination.19 In general, American poets were faster than the British to follow Eliot into a poetry ...
Page 13
... culture . Less fraught ac- counts have questioned the validity of such categories as high and low mod- ernism . Yet apart from the study of ideology - Yeats's self - positioning in Irish politics , Eliot's anti - Semitism — cultural ...
... culture . Less fraught ac- counts have questioned the validity of such categories as high and low mod- ernism . Yet apart from the study of ideology - Yeats's self - positioning in Irish politics , Eliot's anti - Semitism — cultural ...
Page 14
... culture. Adorno's position, I believe, is far too stark and pessimistic to represent the field; nonetheless, I would argue that he anticipates much subsequent cul- tural theory in not taking seriously the poetic claim to a unique and ...
... culture. Adorno's position, I believe, is far too stark and pessimistic to represent the field; nonetheless, I would argue that he anticipates much subsequent cul- tural theory in not taking seriously the poetic claim to a unique and ...
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