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 37
Page 3
... social participation—the history of plain English is also, in part, the history of post-Romantic (especially modern) poetry. At the very least, the low register can be a thread through the labyrinth of Modernism or, to pick a slightly ...
... social participation—the history of plain English is also, in part, the history of post-Romantic (especially modern) poetry. At the very least, the low register can be a thread through the labyrinth of Modernism or, to pick a slightly ...
Page 8
... social. His chief strategy of self- preservation in these years is an autobiographical, psychological myth that lo- cates (or quarantines) his direct, obliterating encounters with nature in the deep past, the world of his childhood ...
... social. His chief strategy of self- preservation in these years is an autobiographical, psychological myth that lo- cates (or quarantines) his direct, obliterating encounters with nature in the deep past, the world of his childhood ...
Page 10
... an attitude that he shares with most of his fellow Modernists , and which , I suggest in chapters 3 and 4 , has both social and personal origins . Chapter traces Yeats's attempts to salvage a visionary authority, without 10 Introduction.
... an attitude that he shares with most of his fellow Modernists , and which , I suggest in chapters 3 and 4 , has both social and personal origins . Chapter traces Yeats's attempts to salvage a visionary authority, without 10 Introduction.
Page 11
... social order which [turned] from the worship of an- cestors and past authorities to the pursuit of a projected future,” resulting in “a great emptying . . . of the imagination.” While this is a compelling description of early-twentieth ...
... social order which [turned] from the worship of an- cestors and past authorities to the pursuit of a projected future,” resulting in “a great emptying . . . of the imagination.” While this is a compelling description of early-twentieth ...
Page 12
... social, or historical conditions, changed over time. Because these changes often occurred slowly over the poets' lives, I draw on their biographies, and proceed at the pace biographical readings require. My larger emphasis could be ...
... social, or historical conditions, changed over time. Because these changes often occurred slowly over the poets' lives, I draw on their biographies, and proceed at the pace biographical readings require. My larger emphasis could be ...
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