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 53
Page 2
... later by Lord Kames : “ As words are intimately connected with the ideas they represent , the emotions raised by the sound and the sense ought to be con- cordant . An elevated subject requires an elevated style ; what is familiar ought ...
... later by Lord Kames : “ As words are intimately connected with the ideas they represent , the emotions raised by the sound and the sense ought to be con- cordant . An elevated subject requires an elevated style ; what is familiar ought ...
Page 3
... later call the desolation of reality. One almost senses in Shakespeare's shift an intuition, far transcending literary etiquette, of the low register's special ability to signify the actual world. I will suggest shortly why this ...
... later call the desolation of reality. One almost senses in Shakespeare's shift an intuition, far transcending literary etiquette, of the low register's special ability to signify the actual world. I will suggest shortly why this ...
Page 10
... later by Yeats , Eliot , and company . Specifically : the Shelleyan imaginative tradition , which built on Wordsworth's visionary pose without acknowledging his psychology , collapses during the 1890s , under pressure from a series of ...
... later by Yeats , Eliot , and company . Specifically : the Shelleyan imaginative tradition , which built on Wordsworth's visionary pose without acknowledging his psychology , collapses during the 1890s , under pressure from a series of ...
Page 12
... later influence Wordsworth.22 I then approach each of the four central poets from a variety of perspectives—psychological, historical, rhetorical, and so on. My readings take me into areas where the borders between these approaches ...
... later influence Wordsworth.22 I then approach each of the four central poets from a variety of perspectives—psychological, historical, rhetorical, and so on. My readings take me into areas where the borders between these approaches ...
Page 15
... later, in William Wordsworth— either his wider practices as a writer or a systematic understanding of language on his part. As Albert Baugh observes, his vocabulary is by far the largest of any major English writer, and if anything, his ...
... later, in William Wordsworth— either his wider practices as a writer or a systematic understanding of language on his part. As Albert Baugh observes, his vocabulary is by far the largest of any major English writer, and if anything, his ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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