Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry
Author: Patricia Meyer Spacks
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2009-02-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1405153628

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry recaptures for modern readers the urgency, distinctiveness and rewarding nature of this challenging and powerful body of poetry. An essential guide to reading eighteenth-century poetry, written by world-renowned critic, Patricia Meyer Spacks Exposes the multiplicity of forms, tones, and topics engaged by poets during this period Provides in-depth analysis of poems by established figures such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, as well as work by less familiar figures, including Anne Finch and Mary Leapor A broadly chronological structure incorporates close reading alongside insightful contextual and historical detail Captures the power and uniqueness of eighteenth-century poetry, creating an ideal guide for those returning to this period, or delving into it for the first time

Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century

Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Christina Lupton
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-08-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1421425777

How did eighteenth-century readers find and make time to read? Books have always posed a problem of time for readers. Becoming widely available in the eighteenth century—when working hours increased and lighter and quicker forms of reading (newspapers, magazines, broadsheets) surged in popularity—the material form of the codex book invited readers to situate themselves creatively in time. Drawing on letters, diaries, reading logs, and a range of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels, Christina Lupton’s Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century concretely describes how book-readers of the past carved up, expanded, and anticipated time. Placing canonical works by Elizabeth Inchbald, Henry Fielding, Amelia Opie, and Samuel Richardson alongside those of lesser-known authors and readers, Lupton approaches books as objects that are good at attracting particular forms of attention and paths of return. In contrast to the digital interfaces of our own moment and the ephemeral newspapers and pamphlets read in the 1700s, books are rarely seen as shaping or keeping modern time. However, as Lupton demonstrates, books are often put down and picked up, they are leafed through as well as read sequentially, and they are handed on as objects designed to bridge temporal distances. In showing how discourse itself engages with these material practices, Lupton argues that reading is something to be studied textually as well as historically. Applying modern theorists such as Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour, and Bernard Stiegler, Lupton offers a rare phenomenological approach to the study of a concrete historical field. This compelling book stands out for the combination of archival research, smart theoretical inquiry, and autobiographical reflection it brings into play.

The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse

The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse
Author: Roger Lonsdale
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 912
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0191501425

No previous anthology has succeeded in illustrating so thoroughly the kinds of verse actually written in the eighteenth century. The familiar tradition is fully represented by selections from such poets as Pope, Swift, Tomson, Gray, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, and Blake. In addition, the anthology includes verse by many forgotten writers, both men and women, from all levels of society. Although they have never figured in conventional literary history, they wrote humorous, idiosyncratic, and graphic verse about their personal experience and the world around them, in a way that should challenge received ideas about the period's restraints and inhibitions.

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered
Author: Kate Parker
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2013-12-24
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1611484847

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered beginswith the brute fact that poetry jostledup alongside novels in the bookstallsof eighteenth-century England. Indeed,by exploringunexpected collisions and collusionsbetween poetry and novels, this volumeof exciting, new essays offers a reconsideration of the literary and cultural history of the period. Thenovel poached from and featured poetry, and the “modern” subjects and objects privileged by “rise of the novel” scholarship are only one part of a world full of animate things and people with indistinct boundaries. Contributors: Margaret Doody, David Fairer, Sophie Gee, Heather Keenleyside, ShelleyKing, Christina Lupton, Kate Parker, Natalie Phillips, Aran Ruth, Wolfram Schmidgen, Joshua Swidzinski, and Courtney Weiss Smith.

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry
Author: John Sitter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2001-03-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139825976

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry analyzes major premises, preoccupations, and practices of English poets writing from 1700 to the 1790s. These specially-commissioned essays avoid familiar categories and single-author approaches to look at the century afresh. Chapters consider such large poetic themes as nature, the city, political passions, the relation of death to desire and dreams, appeals to an imagined future, and the meanings of 'sensibility'. Other chapters explore historical developments such as the connection between poetic couplets and conversation, the conditions of publication, changing theories of poetry and imagination, growing numbers of women poets and readers, the rise of a self-consciously national tradition, and the place of lyric poetry in thought and practice. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students.

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry
Author: Paula R. Backscheider
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 866
Release: 2005-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0801895901

“Our sense of eighteenth-century poetic territory is immeasurably expanded by [this] excellent historical and cultural” study of UK women poets of the era (Cynthia Wall, Studies in English Literature). This major work offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms. Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women’s poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important verse forms, she sheds light on such topics as women’s use of religious poetry to express ideas about patriarchy and rape; the important role of friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet. Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association

Eighteenth-Century Poetry

Eighteenth-Century Poetry
Author: David Fairer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 111882475X

Currently the definitive text in the field and now available in an expanded third edition, Eighteenth-Century Poetry presents the rich diversity of English poetry from 1700-1800 in authoritative texts and with full scholarly annotation. Balanced to reflect current interests and "favorites" (including prominent poets like Finch, Swift, Pope, Montagu, Johnson, Gray, Burns, and Cowper) as well as less familiar material, offering a variety of voices and new directions for research and learning Includes 46 new poems with more texts by women poets and the inclusion of four additional poets (Mary Barber, Mehetabel Wright, Anna Seward, and Mary Robinson); poems reflecting new ecological approaches to 18th-century literature; and poems on the art of writing Accessible and user-friendly, with generous head notes, full foot-of-page annotations, an expanded thematic index, and a visually appealing text design

Graveyard Poetry

Graveyard Poetry
Author: Dr Eric Parisot
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2013-10-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1472402197

While immensely popular in the eighteenth century, current critical wisdom regards graveyard poetry as a short-lived fad with little lasting merit. In the first book-length study of this important poetic mode, Eric Parisot suggests, to the contrary, that graveyard poetry is closely connected to the mid-century aesthetic revision of poetics. Graveyard poetry's contribution to this paradigm shift, Parisot argues, stems from changing religious practices and their increasing reliance on printed material to facilitate private devotion by way of affective and subjective response. Coupling this perspective with graveyard poetry’s obsessive preoccupation with death and salvation makes visible its importance as an articulation or negotiation between contemporary religious concerns and emerging aesthetics of poetic practice. Parisot reads the poetry of Robert Blair, Edward Young and Thomas Gray, among others, as a series of poetic experiments that attempt to accommodate changing religious and reading practices and translate religious concerns into parallel reconsiderations of poetic authority, agency, death and afterlife. Making use of an impressive body of religious treatises, sermons and verse that ground his study in a precise historical moment, Parisot shows graveyard poetry's strong ties to seventeenth-century devotional texts, and most importantly, its influential role in the development of late eighteenth-century sentimentalism and Romanticism.

A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature

A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Author: John Richetti
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2017-10-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1119082129

A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is a lively exploration of one of the most diverse and innovative periods in literary history. Capturing the richness and excitement of the era, this book provides extensive coverage of major authors, poets, dramatists, and journalists of the period, such as Dryden, Pope and Swift, while also exploring the works of important writers who have received less attention by modern scholars, such as Matthew Prior and Charles Churchill. Uniquely, the book also discusses noncanonical, working-class writers and demotic works of the era. During the eighteenth-century, Britain experienced vast social, political, economic, and existential changes, greatly influencing the literary world. The major forms of verse, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, experimental works, drama, and political prose from writers such as Montagu, Finch, Johnson, Goldsmith and Cowper, are discussed here in relation to their historical context. A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of English literature. Topics covered include: Verse in the early 18th century, from Pope, Gay, and Swift to Addison, Defoe, Montagu, and Finch Poetry from the mid- to late-century, highlighting the works of Johnson, Gray, Collins, Smart, Goldsmith, and Cowper among others, as well as women and working-class poets Prose Fiction in the early and 18th century, including Behn, Haywood, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett The novel past mid-century, including experimental works by Johnson, Sterne, Mackenzie, Walpole, Goldsmith, and Burney Non-fiction prose, including political and polemical prose 18th century drama

English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1789

English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1789
Author: David Fairer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317892879

In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.