The first study of poetic language from a historical and philosophical
perspective
In a series of 12 chapters, exemplary poems - by Walter Ralegh, John
Milton, William Cowper, William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, Frank O'Hara, Robert Creeley, W. S. Graham,
Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Thomas A. Clark - are read alongside
theoretical discussions of poetic language.
The discussions provide a jargon-free account of a wide range of
historical and contemporary schools of thought about poetic language,
and an organised, coherent critique of those schools (including
analytical philosophy, cognitive poetics, structuralism and
post-structuralism). Via close readings of poems from 1600 to the
present readers are taken through a wide range of styles including
modernist, experimental and innovative poetries. Paired chapters within
a chronological structure allow lecturers and students to approach the
material in a variety of ways (by individual chapters, paired historical
periods) that are appropriate to different courses.
Key Features:
Surveys a variety of linguistic and philosophical approaches to poetic
language: analytical, cognitive, post-structuralist, pragmatic
Provides readings of complete poems and places those readings within the
wider context of each poet's work
Combines theory and practice
Includes a Glossary, Notes on Poets and Suggested Further Reading
