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 13
... identity which is not socio - histor- ical , which is other than a cultural construction . ” 25 A particularly dark state- ment of the case from one of the founders of the discipline : Neutralized and ready - made , traditional culture ...
... identity which is not socio - histor- ical , which is other than a cultural construction . ” 25 A particularly dark state- ment of the case from one of the founders of the discipline : Neutralized and ready - made , traditional culture ...
Page 30
... identity. At any given moment we are aware of ourselves receiving a consecutive stream of impressions. It is only by the grace of memory, a memory always challenged by forgetfulness, that we can claim connection to the per- son (or the ...
... identity. At any given moment we are aware of ourselves receiving a consecutive stream of impressions. It is only by the grace of memory, a memory always challenged by forgetfulness, that we can claim connection to the per- son (or the ...
Page 44
... identity in the community ) or a “ man ” ? The constant alternation between those terms , which begins in these lines , continues through the poem . The precision and specificity of description are finally more puzzling than informative ...
... identity in the community ) or a “ man ” ? The constant alternation between those terms , which begins in these lines , continues through the poem . The precision and specificity of description are finally more puzzling than informative ...
Page 63
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Page 82
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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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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