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 6
... poet's own gift, apocalyptic to the point of annihilating the outside world. “Wordsworth,” claims Harold Bloom, “had no true subject except his own subjective nature.” Such poetry, Perloff adds, inevitably privileges content over ...
... poet's own gift, apocalyptic to the point of annihilating the outside world. “Wordsworth,” claims Harold Bloom, “had no true subject except his own subjective nature.” Such poetry, Perloff adds, inevitably privileges content over ...
Page 7
... poet's personality to a wide range of stimuli, and which express, in their refusal of closure, an ideology of action and process.15 The way is paved for construc- tivist sensibilities like Zukofsky and Olson, and language poets like ...
... poet's personality to a wide range of stimuli, and which express, in their refusal of closure, an ideology of action and process.15 The way is paved for construc- tivist sensibilities like Zukofsky and Olson, and language poets like ...
Page 9
... poets— second-generation Romantic, High Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, Decadent—who wrote during these years? The answer, I believe, speaks to the underlying ... poet's worldview than by his (or her) subject matter, or the Introduction 9.
... poets— second-generation Romantic, High Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, Decadent—who wrote during these years? The answer, I believe, speaks to the underlying ... poet's worldview than by his (or her) subject matter, or the Introduction 9.
Page 14
... poet's right to speak. These grounds are often tangled in self-deception; yet it is precisely poetry's embrace of ... poet, the poetry we will read originates in (a not always disagreeing) response to his position. It is thus with Locke ...
... poet's right to speak. These grounds are often tangled in self-deception; yet it is precisely poetry's embrace of ... poet, the poetry we will read originates in (a not always disagreeing) response to his position. It is thus with Locke ...
Page 52
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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 attempts Auden become begins Book Cambridge career century chapter claims common Compare consciousness continues critics culture death decade diction different discussion early effect Eliot Essays existence experience expression fact feelings finally find first follow human ideas identity idiom imagination important John kind knowledge language late later less letter lines Locke Locke’s look low register lyric mature meaning memory mind myth nature never object observed offers once origins passage past perhaps period plain English poem poet poetic poetry political present psychology question reality reason recognize relation response rhetoric Romantic seems sense signify social sounds stanza style suggest takes theory things thought tion tradition truth turn understanding University Press verse vision visionary voice Wordsworth writing written Yeats Yeats’s York