Classic Writings On Poetry

by Harmon, William

• ISBN13: 9780231123716
• ISBN10: 023112371X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-30
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

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 GrassPoetry 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 Grassserve 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 Poetryis 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 Republicand Aristotle's Poeticsto the Norse mythology of Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál. John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesyand Shelley's A Defence of Poetryare 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 Poetryis a journey well worth taking.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
1. Plato	1	(30)
The Republic (excerpt)	3	(28)
2. Aristotle	31	(32)
Poetics	33	(30)
3. Horace	63	(12)
"Ars Poetica"	64	(11)
4. Publius Cornelius Tacitus	75	(4)
Germania (excerpt)	76	(3)
5. Longinus (?)	79	(28)
"On the Sublime" (excerpt)	80	(27)
6. Snorri Sturluson	107	(8)
Skaldskaparmal	109	(6)
7. Sir Philip Sidney	115	(38)
The Defence of Poesy	117	(36)
8. John Milton	153	(4)
"Of Education" (excerpt)	155	(2)
9. John Dryden	157	(50)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy	159	(48)
10. Alexander Pope	207	(36)
An Essay on Criticism	209	(20)
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot	229	(14)
11. Samuel Johnson	243	(26)
Lives of the Poets (excerpts)	245	(1)
"Life of Milton"	245	(8)
"Preface to Abraham Cowley"	253	(3)
"Life of Dryden	256	(7)
"Life of Thomas Gray"	263	(6)
12. Thomas Gray	269	(8)
The Progress of Poesy	271	(6)
13. William Wordsworth	277	(20)
Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads	279	(18)
14. Samuel Taylor Coleridge	297	(8)
Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV	299	(6)
15. Francis Jeffrey	305	(8)
The State of Modern Poetry (excerpt)	307	(6)
16. William Hazlitt	313	(4)
On Poetry in General (excerpt)	315	(2)
17. Thomas Love Peacock	317	(14)
The Four Ages of Poetry (excerpt)	318	(13)
18. George Gordon, Lord Byron	331	(18)
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (excerpt)	333	(16)
19. Percy Bysshe Shelley	349	(26)
A Defence of Poetry	351	(24)
20. William Cullen Bryant	375	(4)
The Poet	377	(2)
21. John Keats	379	(6)
Poems	381	(4)
22. Ralph Waldo Emerson	385	(20)
The Poet (excerpt)	387	(18)
23. Elizabeth Barrett Browning	405	(18)
Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book (excerpt)	407	(16)
24. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	423	(6)
Poems	424	(5)
25. Edgar Allan Poe	429	(12)
The Philosophy of Composition	431	(10)
26. Walt Whitman	441	(20)
Preface to Leaves of Grass, first edition	443	(18)
27. Matthew Arnold	461	(24)
The Study of Poetry	463	(22)
28. Emily Dickinson	485	(8)
Poems	487	(6)
29. Rudyard Kipling	493	(14)
"Proofs of Holy Writ"	495	(12)
30. Ezra Pound	507	(12)
A Retrospect	508	(11)
31. T.S. Eliot	519	(8)
The Possibility of a Poetic Drama	521	(6)
32. Laura (Riding) Jackson	527
Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality	529