- Paperback: 1104 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix; New edition edition (3 Jun 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0753807459
- ISBN-13: 978-0753807453
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 347,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Quintessentially good-humoured, consummately unstuffy, all but dripping with erudition: Michael Schmidt is an English scholar to die for. In this seminal work he undertakes--and succeeds at--an imposing task: leading us through a vast and swirling river otherwise known as the expanded canon of English literature.
Taking the era of the Black Death as a starting point--children dragged by their foster mothers past lime-doused pits of the dead--he immediately captures our justifiably sceptical attention. Travelling from Lichfield and Devon, to Cambridge, Stratford, and York (to name a few), he's soon our trusted tour guide, offering literary criticism, summaries, biographies, forging connections between and among the greats and lesser knowns. We're also treated to an entertaining array of anecdotes, including, for instance, that Shakespeare's contemporaries quaffed the first English beer (hops having arrived in Kent), and that upon its initial publication, Walt Whitman's Song of Myself was banned in Boston. Like all good guides, he knows exactly when to speed up, when to pull to shore to examine more closely the murky depths.
With opinions at times bordering on the acerbic--he spares no kindness for Allen Ginsberg and his brand of substance-abuse induced visions, nor is he about to excuse Wallace Stevens for "signing his soul over to the Hartford" [Insurance Company]--Schmidt navigates through choppy, and at times altogether uncharted waters. Under his avuncular tutelage, we come to understand how this "vulgar English...this poor cousin of Latin and Norman French" rose from the lowly depths of servant's quarters and peasant's fields to the chosen language of Chaucer and Milton, and all who follow in their wake. --Martha Silano --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Michael Schmidt surveys the rise of English poetry and the language itself from the Black Death to the court poetry of Chaucer and Sir Philip Sidney, the triumph of Marlowe and Shakespeare, the wit of Donne and Marvell, the urbane sophistication of Pope and Dr Johnson, the romanticism of Keats and Shelley, the questioning spirit of the Victorians and ending with the twentieth century, from T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats to Paul Muldoon and Thom Gunn. Each chapter combines commentary and quotation to acquaint the reader with the main themes of the poet's work, what his influences were, what the key works are, as well as bringing in from the margins some neglected voices. An indispensable book for all those interested in poetry who may not want to read an entire biography of a poet and for anyone studying poetry at school or university.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years and I'm so glad I've finally got around to reading it! Starting with the 14th century, Schmidt tells not just the story of English poetry, but also the story of English as a vernacular language, a very poor cousin to Latin brought over by the Norman conquerors. With potted and eclectic biographies of the poets themselves, he sweeps over their key works not as a literary critic or academic, but as a reader who engages emotionally (or not!) with their work. It is sometimes regarded as a little amateur in academia to talk about the lives of writers and for that reason alone this book would be a gem and a collector's item, but it is also a book for readers and lovers of poetry for its sheer pleasures, quite apart from its literary merits.
I wished Schmidt had started earlier and put anglo-saxon works such a Beowulf into the chronology, and he also bypasses the Arthurian romances, but that's a small criticism of a wonderful book.
I wished Schmidt had started earlier and put anglo-saxon works such a Beowulf into the chronology, and he also bypasses the Arthurian romances, but that's a small criticism of a wonderful book.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A wonderfully accessible yet polemical read, this book fills a niche of potted biography which nevertheless can relate the work back to the life.
Schmidt clearly knows his onions and his prose style is always exuberant, sustaining interest for the full 900+ pages. Probably, this text is meant to be read straight through as a novel bringing disparate strands of biiographical detail into one morphous whole.In particular the concept of suffering as the only condition for poetic creativity is a frequently recurring motif
There will always be debate about inclusion / and exclusion (Isn't there always with every anthology?) - my only quibble is the inordinate amount of space afforded to the most contemporary of writers compared to the dead white males who, despite their current politcally uncorrectness certainly seemed to have spicier lives than their still-breathing successors.
Rave on John Donne!
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mr Schmidt has collected here varied essays regarding most of the main poets together with explanations of thought processes, emotions, and reasons. These three factors are sadly missing in other texts. The author gives us more than mere flavours, he enriches the development of poetry and specifically poetic forms through the masters. A casing point is Wordsworth, who could so easily have repeated the previous generations cycles of writing but boldly transformed the rhythmic verse prose approach to such an extent that in the begining Wordsworth was ridiculed. By the end of his life he was proudly Poet Laureate and the most favoured poet of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. There are so many other countless refers on other poets that require the reader to research deeper and that is the true quality of Mr Schmidt's work. The book has a tendancy to jump a little but this is unavoidable and acceptable. Mr Schmidt achieves a balance by bringing into focus references to Auden, Yeats, Amis, and Larkin, but at the same time does not damage any poets contained herein. His essays are honest, unpatronising, but occasionally surreal in delivery. A fine text and very recommendable.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Contrariwise..
For a book of this title the authorial voice is remarkably obtrusive, yet oddly muffled. 'Larkin begins to enjoy a polemical palisade'(? Read more
Published 9 months ago by Simon G. Barrett
Love it
Not many books make me grab a pencil and write notes in the margin, look up words I don't understand and hilight paragraphs that enlighten me. Read more
Published on 26 July 2009 by Mr. Benjamin N. Read
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
