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 11
Page 19
... signification, as by instinct of God and nature they first were receaved and understood, but heerof grew this bene- fit, that by apt ioyning together of two or three of these woords of one sillable, new woords of more diversitie of ...
... signification, as by instinct of God and nature they first were receaved and understood, but heerof grew this bene- fit, that by apt ioyning together of two or three of these woords of one sillable, new woords of more diversitie of ...
Page 20
... primary or im- mediate signification stand for nothing but ideas in the mind of him that uses them ” ( III.2.2 , italics mine ) . Since ideas about the world often differ wildly from per- son to person ( is your “ red ” my 20 Prologue.
... primary or im- mediate signification stand for nothing but ideas in the mind of him that uses them ” ( III.2.2 , italics mine ) . Since ideas about the world often differ wildly from per- son to person ( is your “ red ” my 20 Prologue.
Page 25
... signification can be approached , even as the final unknowa- bility of substance prevents certain accuracy . 18 Modes , finally , make for the least reliable verbal signs . Generated voluntarily by the mind without reference to nature ...
... signification can be approached , even as the final unknowa- bility of substance prevents certain accuracy . 18 Modes , finally , make for the least reliable verbal signs . Generated voluntarily by the mind without reference to nature ...
Page 27
... signification of the word is referred to a standard, which standard is not easy to be known. Fourthly, where the signification of the word, and the real essence of the thing, are not exactly the same. (III.9.5) Proper speech, then ...
... signification of the word is referred to a standard, which standard is not easy to be known. Fourthly, where the signification of the word, and the real essence of the thing, are not exactly the same. (III.9.5) Proper speech, then ...
Page 29
... significations . For the purposes of the sent work , it finally matters little whether or not Locke believes such a language feasible . In fact , he probably considers it , as Ayers suggests , a " practical impos- sibility . " 20 The ...
... significations . For the purposes of the sent work , it finally matters little whether or not Locke believes such a language feasible . In fact , he probably considers it , as Ayers suggests , a " practical impos- sibility . " 20 The ...
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