Search

This article presents an exhaustive work of poet Thomas Gray in the field of literature. In the fall of 1761, Gray, celebrated author of the poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and future professor of modem history at Cambridge, offered to help his college friend, Thomas Warton. Had Gray been less choosy, he wouldn't have had much difficulty finding what he wanted. Wallpaper was not a rare commodity in the mid-eighteenth century, especially in England, where the wallpaper trade was then concentrated. Gray may have been unsure how to treat a poem in an antique style but of modern vintage, but the eighteenth century did not lack a vocabulary for this kind of hybridity.

The article discusses the history and development of English lyric poetry during the early modern period. It describes long-held literary theories regarding the influence of poets Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard on English poetry and explores challenges to critical literary theories regarding the primacy of Wyatt's and Howard's influence. The ways in which printing innovations and marketing strategies, along the personal tastes of the reading public, contributed to the revolution in English literature in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The article examines dialect poetry, the underlying context of poems made by William Barnes as well as discusses the literary canon. It mentions that dialect poetry had most likely been ignored by writers and that its literary admirers frequently lack the technical expertise to analyze its typical features. It relates that the William Barnes Society is among the institutions who provided care in preserving the literature through publishing articles and books related to it. It further affirms that English poetry has dominated over the dialect ones since it has been the major and standard language being taught in schools.

The article focuses on John Keats's secondhand relation to classical literature. It is said that Keats's repeated trashing has rooted from the connection of refuse and the art. It is cited that sensing the resemblance between the objects preserved under glass and those in landfills could acknowledge sources for the modern museum. It is mentioned that Keats's urge to generate capital out of his poems yielded an excess poetry and wasteful production, in which his museum poems fluctuate between a view of art as bourgeois functionalization and a view of art as physician to all men.

This article critiques the poem "Well-Wrought Urns," by John Donne.

This article examines selfhood and identity relative to poet Andrew Marvell. Marvell's narrative is a veritable etiology of the self: a dramatic and determining story of eros and abuse, and of wounding and incapacity. The poem "The Unfortunate Lover" is the supreme text of his imagined life. It is rationalized by some that the poem is an exercise in the arrangement of images and emblems.

The author comments on Christina Rossetti's canonical poem "Goblin Market." He notes that it continues to captivate with its critical yet ambivalent assessment of the overlapping spheres of Victorian economics and politics despite its deceptive form. He argues that the poem's language of economics rehearses a form of desire and a mode of enjoyment based on self-negation. He also presented his reactions to the poem in five sections each offering close-reading criticism.

The article examines the textual interior of the poetry of writer Thomas Hardy. Hardy's poetry does not organize, rationalize or valorize objects it takes. It does not bring them under a concept of the aesthetic. The materials incorporated by the poetry retain an awkward empirical quiddity even if they are assembled in a recognizable value-form.

The article focuses on the poetic work of Virgil entitled "Georgics," which has yielded valuable insights concerning the transformations to which literary texts and the practice of interpretation are susceptible. The author points out that one can detect the exegesis of Virgil's self-presentation in the poem as poet-perceptor, and an attempt to recast conventional claims about the instrumentality of literary texts which imply the educational legacy of Virgil.

The article presents a comparative analysis of Edwin Arnold's poem "Light of Asia" and Richard Phillips' poem "The Story of Gautama Buddha." They were driven by a Protestant belief in the truth-telling authority of the most ancient textual sources. They unavoidably participated in the appropriation of Buddhism from its indigenous contexts by attempting to turn it into a purified textual object of Western knowledge. They were able to identify the culture-specific elements of Buddhist practice and doctrine from those elements that were duplicated across nations/cultures/ languages.

This article focuses on the writing of poet Walt Whitman. In a notebook entitled "Words," Whitman writes the word "absences," tags a dash onto the end of it, and then adds the parenthetical phrase, "his mind was full of absences." This page is certainly no more odd than many others in the poet's writings on language. There is something peculiarly significant about the juxtaposition of absence and apostle, a fortuitous placement that offers a unique opportunity for understanding how Whitman himself envisioned the relationship between the scene of writing and the scene of reading.

The article discusses various issues related to prize poems, minstrel contests, and romantic poetry. The writer of a prize poem cannot, like poet William Wordsworth, declare poetry to be addressing an audience that will come to appreciate it later. Poets in contests do not have the luxury to dictate the terms of their acceptance; the pleasure of an immediate, opinionated audience must rule the day if a prize is to be won, and the poet cannot afford to announce a negative judgment of that taste. Minstrel writing had traditionally celebrated the minstrel's ability to inspire listeners directly, with an oral performance appropriate to the moment of composition.

The article discusses writer Virgil's work "Georgics," as a scientific text. Of all the literary works of classical antiquity, Virgil's Georgics, a didactic poem on the subject of husbandry written in the years 37-30 B.C., was deemed by eighteenth century British writers an unparalleled model of literary perfection. Writer John Dryden esteemed the Georgics the divinest part of all Virgil's writings, and Joseph Addison judged it the most complete, elaborate, and finish piece of all antiquity. The presence of the Georgics was also registered in literary forms far beyond poetry, from travelogues, scientific treatises, and manuals of husbandry, to essays, novels, and conduct books.

The article presents information on the poetic works of William Blake. His prophetic poem were enormously popular in the 1960s. Those poems promise that, after the apocalypse, young men will regain their polymorphous perverse sexuality and live in a state of eternal bliss. But in the less euphoric 1970s feminists argued that this androgynous utopia was inherently misogynistic. However, the recent resurgence of androgynous figures in films and novels as well as in men's wear and advertising suggests that it may be time to take another look at Blake's espousal of an androgynous utopia.

The article focuses on the literary works of John Heywood who was a musician, poet, dramatist and lifelong Catholic. In his poem "The Spider and the Flie," Heywood praises a state that never come to be, an absolutist but also populist regime that would hold off the depredations of agrarian capitalism. The mid-Tudor crisis shows not only the economic struggle between exploiting and exploited classes intrinsic to all modes of production but also a political struggle between two modes of production. In this model, a class of commoner capitalist farmers, merchants, and manufacturers rises and overthrows a class of feudal lords.

Discusses the spectre of the Reformation that haunted the poem 'Faerie Queene,' by Edmund Spencer in England during the late 1500s. Elizabethan response to the Reformation presented by the poem; Elements such as anti-clericalism that are contained by the poem; Implications on studies on the problem of libraries.

Focuses on the theme of the poem 'Amoretti and Epithalamion,' by Edmund Spencer. Influence of Spencer's social status on the contents of the poem; Implications for social classes in Ireland; Strategies used by Spencer to create social distinction and a control of property in Ireland.

Focuses on the characterization of the poem 'Squire's Tale' in Chaucerian text. Narration of Pegasus and its literary origin; Description of the concept and context of Chaucer; Claims on the individual poetic authority of the tale.

Argues that poetry was a more congenial medium for Ralph Waldo Emerson at the point in his life when he prepared his 1876 book `Selected Poems.' Representations of Emerson's identity as a writer at the end of his career; 20th-century readers' underappreciation of Emerson's poetry; Publication of `May-Day and Other Pieces' in 1867; Ellen Emerson's description of the toll exacted by age and overwork.

Examines the reference which Chaucer made about Gower and morality in the dedication of the poem `Troilus and Criseyde.' Contention that Gower's morality can not be taken at face value; Revelation of Chaucer's dedication; Description of R.F. Yeager's view of the dedication.

Focuses on poetry from the First World War. Investigation of Wilfred Owen's and Siefried Sassoon's version of ethical passivity; Comparison to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas; Examination of the assignment of the passivity to the feminine in light of Owen's and Sassoon's homosexuality.

Presents an analysis of John Donne's poem, `Sapho to Philaenis.' Characterization of the poetic speaker in Donne's secular poetry; Economic, political and erotic tropes in Donne's poetry; Zero-sum economy of lesbian erotics; Speaker's notion about women; Breakdown in Donne's putative absolutism.

Discusses the lesbianism and romance in the poetry of Anne Bannerman. Relation of sexuality to literature; Comparison to the Romantic poetry by men and women; Definitions of female genius and lesbianism.

Examines the politically-charged representations of maternity in the poem `Absalom and Achitophel,' by John Dryden. Political and medical context of the poem's familial and sexual details; Dryden's effort to develop a pragmatic and contemporary defense of monarchial authority; Connection between generation and politics; Mother's primary role in conception.

Focuses on the influence of William Shakespeare in John Keats' poem `To Autumn.' Harold Bloom's theory of influence; Similarities between `To Autumn' and Shakespeare's `Antony and Cleopatra'; Treatment of the consciousness of generosity; Incompatibility of consciousness and self-origin; Use of allegorical figures.

Deals with the writing of the poem `Piers Plowman,' by William Langland. Account of early literary/social criticism; Difficulties of critics with the Tree of Charity scene; Use of iconography of the Septuagesima Sunday sermons; Complexity of the model of trifunctionality; Conflict in meaning encountered with the model.