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 |
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Page 35
... feeling . The speaker can respond emotionally only after her at- tention has withdrawn ( we feel the distance in " ordonnance " ) from the object . Wordsworth does not need to tell us that such a response must be envious ; in fact ...
... feeling . The speaker can respond emotionally only after her at- tention has withdrawn ( we feel the distance in " ordonnance " ) from the object . Wordsworth does not need to tell us that such a response must be envious ; in fact ...
Page 36
... feelings of the poet” (italics mine).5 The earliest mature poems, however, usually suggest a desire to be rid of thought, con- sciousness, subjectivity itself. Although the decrepit old man in “Animal Tran- quility and Decay” is said to ...
... feelings of the poet” (italics mine).5 The earliest mature poems, however, usually suggest a desire to be rid of thought, con- sciousness, subjectivity itself. Although the decrepit old man in “Animal Tran- quility and Decay” is said to ...
Page 38
... feeling " and tends " to di- vest language in a certain degree of its reality ” ( 1802 Preface , 264 ) . Such qualities ... feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them , there is some danger that the excitement may be ...
... feeling " and tends " to di- vest language in a certain degree of its reality ” ( 1802 Preface , 264 ) . Such qualities ... feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them , there is some danger that the excitement may be ...
Page 41
... feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair. (X. 897–900)15 He was suffering also from personal reversals, not least his continuing separa- tion, because of the war ...
... feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair. (X. 897–900)15 He was suffering also from personal reversals, not least his continuing separa- tion, because of the war ...
Page 51
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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