Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception

by Edited by Howard Erskine-Hill , Richard A. McCabe

• ISBN13: 9780521473606
• ISBN10: 0521473608
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-06-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The presentation of poetry to auditor and reader involves a complex interaction of rhetorical, orthographical and visual mediating skills. At issue are the nature of "authority," the creation of a readership attuned to the writer's resonance, and a delicate negotiation between literary tradition and individual talent. Leading scholars focus on the presentation of major poetic texts from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, making comparisons across boundaries of generic form. The book includes consideration of the work of Spenser, Milton, Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Browning, Yeats, and Lawrence.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: 'Personae', Sequence and Commentary: 1. 'Little booke: thy selfe present': the politics of presentation in The Shepheardes Calendar Richard A. McCabe

2. 'Cut without hands': Herbert's Christian altar Alastair Fowler

3. On historical commentary: the example of Milton and Dryden Howard Erskine-Hill

4. Sequences of reading: Pope's Moral Essays and Intimations of Horace Pat Rogers

Part II. The Self Presented and Revised: 5. Presenting jeopardy: language, authority, and the voice of Smart in Jubilate Agno Tom Keymer

6. Did Blake betray the French Revolution? A dialogue of the mind with itself Jerome K. McGann

7. Presentation of the self in the composition of The Prelude Robert Woof

8. The epiphanic mode in Browning's poetry Robert Langbaum

Part III. Readerships Inherited and Invented: 9. Newman's leading Eric Griffiths

10. The politics of genre and audience in Yeats Seamus Deane

11. The shaping of D. H. Lawrence's Look We Have Come Through! Mark Kinkead-Weekes

12. Presentation and self-presentation in In Parenthesis Colin Wilcockson.