Poetic Form and British Romanticism
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:26th Apr '90
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Curran here confronts the popular stereotype that the Romantics either accepted or rejected previously established literary genres. He proposes rather that they adapted traditional poetic forms to suit their own democratic, secular, and sceptical ethos. This artistic merger of traditional genre with the tenets of Romanticism was a fruitful one, not only resulting in the revival of the ode and the sonnet, but also leading to the imaginative rethinking of major forms like the pastoral, the epic, and the romance which gave the movement its name.
`Throughout, Curran's explications of major as well as of lesser-known poems in each genre are always interesting and often brilliant, the range of his learning astonishing.' `The compression of his presentation is astonishing, and the overview is stunning ... Its learning, insight, and judiciousness make it, for the serious student, by far the outstanding survey of British Romantic poetry yet written ... It is a book to be bought, read, and reread frequently.' Keats-Shelley Journal
`Poetic Form and British Romanticism achieves a high level of literary scholarship. The notes, which in many cases amount to sizeable supplementary essays, are far removed from the snippety odds and ends appended to some modern critical studies.' Notes and Queries
'Curran provides a concise history of Romantic poetry which is also notable for lucid critical discussions of a large number of poems.' English Studies, Volume 72, Number 6, December 1991
ISBN: 9780195060720
Dimensions: 235mm x 154mm x 15mm
Weight: 415g
288 pages