Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

Transfiguring medievalism combines medieval literature, modern poetry and theology to explore how bodies, including literary bodies, can become apparent to the attentive eye as more than they first appear. Transfiguration, traditionally understood as the...

Drawing from book history and relying on close reading and textual criticism, this collection offers a more nuanced account of the history of the sonnet.This volume questions and qualifies commonly accepted assumptions about the early modern English...

A broad reading of the period's rich trove of funeral elegies, in both manuscript and print, which daringly use individual deaths as opportunities for ethical reflection, political comment, and even satire. The early Stuart funeral elegy was a...

A unique analysis of every Siddal poem alongside works by Rossetti, Swinburne, Ruskin, Tennyson and Keats, and places them in prevailing cultural, political and religious contexts.A ground breaking new book that considers all Siddal poems with reference...

Edmund Spenser and the romance of space advances the exploration of literary space into new areas, firstly by taking advantage of recent interdisciplinary interests in the spatial qualities of early modern thought and culture, and secondly by reading...

Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590; 1596) is an epic romance teeming with dragons, fantastic animals, giants, grotesque human-animal composites, monstrous humans and other creatures. This monograph is the first ever book-length account of Spenser's...

The correspondence of John Dryden is the definitive edition of the letters of the most important playwright and poet of the late seventeenth century. He defined an age and his newly transcribed disparate correspondence is placed in the context of...

This unique and exciting collection, inspired by the scholarship of literary critic Stephanie Trigg, offers cutting-edge responses to the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer for the current critical moment. The chapters are linked by the organic and naturally...

The work of Geoffrey Hill (1932-2016) often provokes bemusement or even hostility; however, he was often referred to as 'the greatest living poet' and variants thereof.Oxford Professor of Poetry from 2010-2015, Hill published in 2013...

The names Edmund Spenser and John Donne are typically associated with different ages in English poetry, the former with the sixteenth century and the Elizabethan Golden Age, the latter with the 'metaphysical' poets of the seventeenth century. This...

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) is a collection of essays by T.S. Eliot. Although Eliot is primarily recognized as one of the twentieth century's leading English poets, he was also a prolific and highly influential literary critic...

This collection of original essays offers new ways of understanding the production of epic poetry in Portugal and Spain from 1543 to 1639. The epic poems written during the rise of Portugal and Spain on the global stage often dealt with topics quite...

A Poetry of Things considers how cultural objects were used by poets in the years around 1600 a time of social and economic crisis, but also of remarkable artistic and literary production.A Poetry of Things examines the works of four poets whose use of...

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), the eminent Russian-American writer and intellectual, is best known for his novels, though he was also the author of plays, poems, and short stories. In this important new work, Paul D. Morris offers a comprehensive reading...

Read this sequence through from page one, or start at any point and let its circles widen, or perhaps go to the lovely, light-syllabled final lyric and discover interesting ways back. The poems themselves breach back and forth to form a questing...

How did a Catholic priest who died a failure become one of the world's greatest poets? Discover in his own words the struggle for faith that gave birth to some of the best spiritual poetry of all time. Gerard Manley Hopkins deserves his place among the...

A monumental event in American poetry, Get the Money!brings together the essential prose writings of iconic New York School poet Ted Berrigan."Ted Berrigan was a leader of the New York School; his crazy energy embodied that movement and the city itself...

This volume celebrates the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet and dramatist. The contributors are a stimulating blend of academics, poets and theatre professionals, all responding in a variety of ways to the creative...

Carmen Conde is a major figure in twentieth-century Spanish poetry. Though neglected up to now, Mientras los hombres mueren is the most important collection of war poetry to emerge from the Spanish Civil War. It was first published, in a limited edition,...

The Philip Larkin I Knew traces the author's close friendship with the poet and stretches over his 30 year tenure of office as librarian of the University of Hull, taking in his literary achievements from "The Less Deceived" (1955), through "The Whitsun...

This edition of the best of Chaucer' s shorter poems ranges widely over the major concerns necessary to a full understanding of the text, including its occasion, literary tradition, sources, rhetoric, language, metre, mythology and themes. It is an...

On the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece, a rich cultural history of The Waste Land's creation, explosive impact, and enduring influence.When T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, it put the thirty-four-year-old author on a...

How rhyme became entangled with debates about the nature of liberty in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry In his 1668 preface to Paradise Lost, John Milton rejected the use of rhyme, portraying himself as a revolutionary freeing English...

How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writingsEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American...

An engaging and authoritative introduction to an increasingly important and popular literary genreProse Poetry is the first book of its kind-an engaging and authoritative introduction to the history, development, and features of English-language prose...

The Tablet, Best Books of the YearOpen Magazine's Best Books of 2020A vivid and original account of one of Ireland's greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographer The most important Irish poet of the postwar...

Presented in one volume for the very first time, and updated with new archival discoveries, Early Auden, Later Auden reintroduces Edward Mendelson's acclaimed, two-part biography of W. H. Auden (1907-73), one of the greatest literary figures of the...

Through three editions over more than four decades, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has built an unrivaled reputation as the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject:...

In this book, novelist Colm Toibin offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Toibin creates a...

In this new interpretation of the life and work of the American poet, short-story writer and novelist "Charles Bukowski", David Stephen Calonne examines Bukowski's writings, colourful life and the desperate conditions of his lifestyle, looking at the...

Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents-in essays, conversations, and socratic raps-the vital work poets perform when they write across borders.Anne Waldman is the author...

This new selection of William Wordsworth's poetry is part of a series of collections from six great nature poets. In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an...