Classic Writings on Poetry

William Harmon

Columbia University Press, 13 kwi 2005 - 560

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Poet"

"[The poet] is a seer.... he is individual... he is complete in himself.... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus. "—Walt Whitman, from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgment, and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's essay "The Poet" and Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass serve as more than a critical "call and response": the works are striking examples of how the finest poets themselves have written on poetics and the works of their peers and predecessors—revealing, in the process, much about the theory and passion behind their own works.

Spanning thousands of years and including thirty-three of the most influential critical essays ever written, Classic Writings on Poetry is the first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Beginning with a survey of the history of poetics and providing an introduction and brief biography for each reading, esteemed poet and critic William Harmon takes readers from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to the Norse mythology of Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál. John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Shelley's A Defence of Poetry are included, as is an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh, arriving, finally, at the modernist sensibility of "Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality," by Laura (Riding) Jackson. For anyone interested in the art and artifice of poetry, Classic Writings on Poetry is a journey well worth taking.

Spis treści

• 1 The Republic excerpt by Plato: 1
• 2 Poetics by Aristotle: 31
• 3 Ars Poetica by Horace: 63
• 4 Germania excerpt by Publius Cornelius Tacitus: 75
• 5 On the Sublime excerpt by Longinus?: 79
• 6 Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson: 107
• 7 The Defence of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney: 115
• 8 Of Education excerpt by John Milton: 153
• 10 An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope: 207
• Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot by Alexander Pope: 229
• 11 Lives of the Poets excerpts by Samuel Johnson: 243
• 12 The Progress of Poesy by Thomas Gray: 269
• 13 Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth: 277
• 14 Biographia Literaria Chapter XIV by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 297
• 15 The State of Modern Poetry excerpt by Francis Jeffrey: 305
• 16 On Poetry in General excerpt by William Hazlitt: 313
• 17 The Four Ages of Poetry excerpt by Thomas Love Peacock: 317
• 18 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers excerpt by George Gordon Lord Byron: 331
• 19 A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley: 349
• 20 The Poet by William Cullen Bryant: 375
• 21 Poems by John Keats: 379
• 22 The Poet excerpt by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 385
• 23 Aurora Leigh Fifth Book excerpt by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 405
• 24 Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 423
• 25 The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe: 429
• 26 Preface to Leaves of Grass first edition 1855 excerpt by Walt Whitman: 443
• 27 The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold: 461
• 28 Poems by Emily Dickinson: 485
• 29 Proofs of Holy Writ by Rudyard Kipling: 493
• 30 A Retrospect by Ezra Pound: 507
• 31 The Possibility of a Poetic Drama by T S Eliot: 519
• 32 Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality by Laura Riding Jackson: 527

Informacje o autorze

Poet, critic, and anthologist, William Harmon is the James Gordon Hanes Professor in the Humanities (English and Comparative Literature) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, The Top 500 Poems, and The Classic Hundred Poems, all published by Columbia, as well as The Oxford Book of American Light Verse.

Informacje bibliograficzne

• Tytuł: Classic Writings on Poetry
• Redaktor: William Harmon
• Wydawca: Columbia University Press, 2005
• ISBN: 0231503229, 9780231503228
• Liczba stron: 560