27 results
Search Results
2. The Map at the Limits of His Paper: A Cartographic Reading of The Prelude, Book 6: "Cambridge and the Alps".
- Author
-
CARLSON, JULIA SANDSTROM
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *CARTOGRAPHY ,EUROPE description & travel ,ALPS description & travel - Abstract
The article offers poetry criticism of the poem "The Prelude," by William Wordsworth, focusing on the section "Cambridge and the Alps" in Book 6 of the poem. It examines the role of the poem in determining biographical information about Wordsworth from the summer of 1790, when he and friend Robert Jones traveled in Europe and the Alps. The author discusses the poem in light of cartography and a letter written from Wordsworth to his sister during the European tour.
- Published
- 2010
3. THE LONG SCHOOLROOM: PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS IN W. B. YEATS'S POEM 'AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN'.
- Author
-
Nutbrown, Graham
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *IDEALISM - Abstract
In the mid-1920s the poet W. B. Yeats was pleased to discover contemporary philosophers, Giovanni Gentile and A. N. Whitehead, whose metaphysical and educational philosophies seemed to coincide with his own commitments. Whitehead shares with Gentile a sense of reality as activity and an understanding of knowledge as constructed from abstractions that are open to evaluation and imaginative reconfiguration. Yeats was a Senator of the Irish Free State and took an interest in schooling. Soon after visiting a Montessori-inspired girls' school in Waterford, he began his poem 'Among School Children". (The text of the poem is printed at the end of this paper.) I argue that an awareness of the philosophical ideas Yeats had recently encountered should encourage restless rather than fixed interpretations of the poem and that this sense of restlessness and imaginative reconfiguration reflects the approach to education the three writers, at that time, shared: that at best our modes of apprehension provide only glimpses of reality and therefore each child's understanding and learning must be kept moving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public in Early Modern England.
- Author
-
Heffernan, Megan
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *ENGLISH poetry , *MODERN poetry , *MODERN literature , *LITERARY criticism , *READING , *EARLY modern history - Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. Native Foreigners: Migrating Seabirds and the Pelagic Soul in The Seafarer.
- Author
-
Warren, Michael J.
- Subjects
- *
OLD English poetry , *ORNITHOLOGY , *BIRDS in literature , *ECOLOGY & literature , *OLD English manuscripts , *POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism - Abstract
In this paper I apply current ecologically centred methodologies in the humanities to explore the familiar image of the bird-soul in The Seafarer in close relation to the real seabirds that are one of the most striking aspects of the maritime environment of the poem. Far from appearing as mere background incidentals, the poet's treatment of the seabirds we first encounter resonates with contemporary ornithological knowledge, and suggests that they feature specifically as species that best convey the ascetic trials and endeavours of the sea-going speaker who observes, listens to and names seabirds. The curious essence of seabirds as creatures that are always at home on the seas, and yet journeying to a home elsewhere, establishes them as what I term "native foreigners", a paradox that highlights the seafarer's conflicting yearnings and reflects the difficult earthly/celestial dynamic in the poem's perceptions of the soul's journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. From Where Have I Eaten My Poetry?: On Bialik and the Maternal.
- Author
-
Dekel, Mikhal
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism , *JEWISH poetry , *MOTHERHOOD in literature - Abstract
The paper examines the image of the maternal in Hayyim Nahman Bialik's poetry and short prose. Contrary to most prior critical evaluations, which have viewed the autobiographical or symbolic mother in Bialik's works as a monolithic representation of misery, helplessness, and self-sacrifice, this paper emphasizes the mother's portrayal as a feared, loathed, and highly ambivalent object of identification vis-à-vis the emergence of the romantic Hebrew male poet. In a reading that spans from Bialik's early lyric poetry to his mature epic "Yatmut" (Orphanhood), the author traces the development of the mother image over the course of the poet's adult life and compares it to maternal images in the works of other romantic poets (William Wordsworth, for example). She also draws parallels between the ambivalent knot through which the poet is bound to his mother, and a similar ambivalent knot that cements the bond between national poet and his "people." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
7. Favoring Nature: Herman Melville's “On the Photograph of a Corps Commander”.
- Author
-
MILLER, ANDREW
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *LITERATURE & photography , *MASCULINITY in literature , *AMERICAN Civil War, 1861-1865 , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
This paper involves a close reading of Herman Melville's poem “On the Photograph of a Corps Commander,” published in Melville's 1866 collection Battle-Pieces. Realizing that Melville's poem is one of the first descriptions (ekphrases) of a photograph in verse, the paper explores how Melville's poem uses physiognomy to describe the subject of the photograph: an American Civil War general, who is only identified as “the Corps Commander.” In this way, Melville's poem reflects the nineteenth-century philosophical and popular notions of photography. These notions came to regard photography as a Neoplatonic medium capable of recording and revealing the inner character of its subjects. Relying on these conceptions of photography, Melville's poem describes the photograph of the Corps Commander as having the power to reveal the Platonic absolute of American masculinity, and thus it comes to hail the photograph as a semi-sacred image that has the power to draw Anglo-Saxon American men into a common brotherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
8. Keats’ ‘Wild Indian Leaf’.
- Author
-
Gourlay, Alexander S.
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism , *INDIANS (Asians) in literature , *PAPER -- History - Abstract
The article offers poetry criticism of the unfinished poem "The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream," by John Keats, focusing on his use of the term wild Indian leaf. It is said that tree leaves were used as paper in India and that Keats would likely have used the word savage to refer to East Indians rather than to Native Americans.
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
9. 'I lov'de thee best': London as Male Beloved in Isabella Whitney's 'The Manner of her Wyll'.
- Author
-
Gleed, Paul
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism , *LONDON (England) in literature , *IRONY in literature , *MASCULINITY in literature - Abstract
This paper reflects on the role of London as male Beloved in Whitney's 'Last Wyll and Testament'. Such a characterization of the city, the paper argues, has two consequences. First, it complicates and provides an important challenge to the ubiquitous personification of London as female in early modern England. Second, this dynamic between female speaker and male Beloved encourages a reconsideration of Whitney's agency in the poem - often celebrated as forceful - as more consciously ironic (although, ultimately, all the more compelling and effective because of it). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] - Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
10. 'Ozymandias,' or De Casibus Lord Byron: Literary Celebrity on the Rocks.
- Author
-
Mozer, HadleyJ.
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *ENGLISH sonnets , *POETS in literature , *ROMANTICISM in literature , *19TH century English poetry - Abstract
Though rarely discussed in such terms, 'Ozymandias' represents a monumental moment in the so-called Shelley-Byron 'debate' or 'conversation.' Noting the failure of source studies to account convincingly for the origins of the facial features of Ozymandias, this paper argues that the pharaoh's 'frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command' are suspiciously Byronic, evoking the physiognomy of the Byronic hero and of Byron himself as portrayed in the widely circulated portrait of 1814-15 by George Henry Harlow. In other words, this paper argues that Ozymandias is a portrait - or rather a word-bust - of that early-nineteenth-century literary colossus known as 'Byron.' By depicting that colossus decapitated and in ruins, Shelley, who felt dwarfed by the genius and celebrity of Byron, prophesies the day when the sun would finally set on the literary empire of the poet whom he despaired of rivaling. Long a routine stop on the grand tour of British Romantic literature, 'Ozymandias' now asks to be revisited as a de casibus poem - i.e. a poem 'on the falls' of the mighty - that does not merely warn despots about the vanity of their pride and ambition but that also lectures Lord Byron on the vanity of his literary celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
11. Catullus's Ameana Cycle as Literary Criticism.
- Author
-
Hendren, T. George
- Subjects
- *
VENOM in literature , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *POETICS - Abstract
This paper will reevaluate Catullus's venom in poems 41 and 43 (the so-called 'Ameana Cycle') to show that his attacks on Ameana are in fact veiled criticisms of Mamurra's loathsome poetry. Catullus's descriptions of Ameana substantiate this reading: her physical features are disproportionate and ill suited to Roman conceptions of beauty, she is entirely without wit, and despite her patent imperfections, she has no idea how hideous she really is. The use of a poetic mistress in this manner has parallels within the Catullan corpus, and is also referenced in the work of Martial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
12. Álvaro de Cañizares, poeta de cancionero.
- Author
-
Chas Aguión, Antonio
- Subjects
- *
SPANISH songbooks , *SPANISH poets , *SPANISH poetry , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
Álvaro de Cañizares belongs to the broad group of cancioneril poets for which barely any information is available. That is, he is one of the authors with works in the earliest songbooks, as his corpus, in the form it has survived to the present, consists of six texts, all of them in a single unique copy: four in the Cancionero de Baena and two in the Cancionero de Palacio. However, in spite of the exiguity of his preserved work, he was not just an occasional poet but a renowned figure among his peers. In this paper I aim to demonstrate the importance of this poet, placing him in a specific historical and poetic context in both the network of relationships he enters into with some of the leading poets of the time; and for his presence in the environment of the confidants of Juan II at various periods from the king’s early youth until late in his reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
13. Forgotten old Czech Source for the Events in Pulkau in 1338.
- Author
-
Soukup, Daniel
- Subjects
- *
JEWISH poetry , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *JEWISH literature , *HOST desecration accusation , *SACRILEGE - Abstract
This short study analyzes an old-Czech poem Kterak Židé mucili Boží tĕlo/How Jews Tortured Corpus Christi that represents a unique and until now only scarcely used source about the alleged host desecration in Pulkau in 1338 and about the subsequent persecution of the Jewish communities in Austria and surrounding regions. The paper will first introduce the text itself, describe its codicological inscription, mention two preserved versions of the text and point out the inspirational sources and inter-textual relations of the poem. Via the genre and formal characteristic analysis of the poem the study shows that although it is a text that describes the events in Pulkau in the fullest detail it is primarily not a historiographical text but it is a text with the function of exemplum. It is a composition full of topoi/loci communes; therefore it is a sermonic, religiously educative and apologetic text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
14. Transplantations.
- Author
-
Bergam, Marija
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *PLANTS in literature , *PLACE (Philosophy) in literature , *CARIBBEAN poetry - Abstract
The aim of this paper is to disclose the nexus of dislocation and ecology in the work of two Caribbean poets, Derek Walcott and Lorna Goodison. It shows how they deal with the founding experiences of the wider Caribbean community, such as diaspora and the process of creolisation, by drawing on the vegetation imagery. The concept of transplantation is central to this reading, as it refers to the history of forced removal, while also celebrating the biological and cultural hybridity of the region. Arguably, the shared preoccupation with island vegetation can be associated with the importance of naming for the Caribbean writers – hence the constant references to language in their representations of local plants. If geographic dislocation caused linguistic dislocation, it is only through the repossession of language that the poet is able to enact a return to her/his homeland. In Walcott and Goodison, however, this aim is pursued through further dislocation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
15. The Bull and the Moon: Broadside Ballads and the Public Sphere at the Time of the Northern Rising (1569-70).
- Author
-
Wilson-Lee, Edward
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *BALLAD (Literary form) - Abstract
This article discusses a series of broadside ballads which report and interpret news arriving in London during the Northern Rising and its aftershocks (1569–70). The ballads share a distinctive motif (heraldic allegory) which allows the evolution of their representational tactics to be traced with some accuracy. Close parallels to the language and chronology of the ballads can also be found in publications linked directly to the Privy Council and in the State Papers—in royal proclamations and a letter to the Queen from Leicester. The evidence adduced is used to provide further detail for our evolving understanding of how a prototype of the public sphere developed in post-Reformation England, and how literary techniques for attracting readers and for apostrophizing the popular voice were used by authors sympathetic to Privy Council directives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
16. TRANSLATIONS OF BAUDELAIRE IN SPAIN 1880-1910.
- Author
-
Hambrook, Glyn
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERATURE translations , *POETRY collections ,TRANSLATIONS of French literature into English - Abstract
This analysis of the pattern of translation of Baudelaire's work in Spain during its initial reception--the fin de siècle--explores possible reasons for the comparatively late translation of the poetry and the chronological precedence of versions of other works, such as the prose poems and Les Paradis artificiels. Drawing on aspects of polysystems theory to provide a conceptual context for discussion, this paper suggests that the pattern of translation in Spain can be explained by pragmatic considerations but also by a more discriminating grasp of contemporary literary developments than fin de siècle Spain is sometimes credited with possessing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
17. BEYOND NATION: CARIBBEAN POETICS IN PEDRO PIETRI'S "PUERTO RICAN OBITUARY" AND KAMAU BRATHWAITE'S "ISLANDS AND EXILES".
- Author
-
ALVARADO, LI YUN
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism , *IMMIGRANTS in literature , *CARIBBEAN literature ,20TH century ,HISTORY & criticism - Abstract
Pedro Pietri's and Kamau Brathwaite's poems suggest that a transnational and translingual comparative approach to Caribbean literature will highlight similarities across nationalities born of parallel colonial histories and emigration experiences. While the texts themselves might not articulate a transnational or translingual perspective, their intertextuality suggests that such a relationship exists. This paper will focus explicitly on how history, language, and religion play out within poems about the emigrant experience in the metropolis. I will argue that colonialism and the transnational movement from the Caribbean to urban centers have fostered similar emigrant experience even among colonial subjects with different national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
18. Arms and the Theologian: Martin Luther's Adversus Armatum Virum Cochlaeum.
- Author
-
Springer, Carl P. E.
- Subjects
- *
INFLUENCE (Literary, artistic, etc.) , *CLASSICAL poetry , *MEDIEVAL & modern Latin poetry , *SIXTEENTH century , *HISTORY , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
This paper examines the influence of Virgil on Martin Luther, paying special attention to a short verse composition of Luther's in Latin, Adversus Armatum Virum Cochlaeum, based on the first lines of the Aeneid. The study suggests that an adequate understanding of Luther's relationship to and use of Virgil needs to take into full account the fact that the Reformer not only knew Virgil's works and quoted from him frequently, but also himself composed verses based on Virgil's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
19. Ancient genres in the poem of a medieval humanist: Intertextual aspects of the `De sufficientia...
- Author
-
Blansdorf, Jurgen
- Subjects
- *
INTERTEXTUALITY , *MEDIEVAL & modern Latin poetry , *POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism - Abstract
In the second half of the 11th century, a humanist circle of clerical poets, living around the central valley of the Loire, was writing poetry in classical language and metre. Baudri of Bourgueil, who wrote an impressive corpus of Latin poems, was an expert in the language, style, verse, motifs and genres of the classical and later antique pagan and Christian poetry, and treated theological as well as profane and explicitly ancient topics. About 1107, when he was urged to become bishop and to abandon his personal independence and quiet monastic life, he gave voice to his disgust of the new ecclesiastical burden by a long poem in elegiac distichs. This paper tries to show the ancient genres Baudri has used and transformed and even inverted in order to describe his special situation. Therefore, in imitating the ancient genres, far from showing only his literary culture, he was rather using them in a very specific and personal way. This use of literary traditions can best be analyzed in terms of intertextuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1995
20. The Narrator in The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem.
- Author
-
Bammesberger, Alfred
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *OLD English poetry , *POINT of view (Literature) , *CHRISTIAN poetry - Abstract
The article discusses the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, which forms part of what has come to be called "The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem," which was the subject of research by scholar John M. Kemble. The similarities between this poem and "The Dream of the Rood." It is noted that in a paper written in 1840, Kemble failed to identify the speaker of the Ruthwell poem as the Cross. Scholar Pamela O'Neill and her rejection of the idea that the Cross speaks to the dreamer in the Ruthwell poem is discussed.
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
21. Sisters Are Sisters: Identity in an Anonymous Middle English Poem.
- Author
-
WUEST, CHARLES
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism , *LOVE in literature , *IDENTITY (Philosophical concept) in literature , *THEMES in poetry - Abstract
The article offers criticism on the 15th-century riddle poem "I have a 3ong suster," written by an anonymous author. Topics examined include the definition of the word suster, which is believed to mean "beloved" or "sweetheart," possible sexual interpretations of the work and insights on the poem's exploration of identity.
- Published
- 2015
22. Girdles, Belts, and Cords: a Leitmotif in Chaucer's General Prologue.
- Author
-
BESSERMAN, LAWRENCE
- Subjects
- *
BELTS (Clothing) in literature , *MIDDLE English poetry , *THEMES in medieval literature , *CLERGY in literature , *POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism - Abstract
The essay, reprinted from an earlier volume of the journal, presents a literary critique of the General Prologue from Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." Focus is given to the prologue's focus on girdles, belts and similar objects as a theme in the work. Commentary highlights Chaucer's use of the objects to criticize the lack of virtues in the religious figures in the story.
- Published
- 2014
23. REVIEW ESSAYS: Realism, Recreation, and Irresolution.
- Author
-
HARTUNG, ALBERT E.
- Subjects
- *
MIDDLE English poetry , *NONFICTION , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
The article reviews the book "Middle English Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics of Irresolution" by Thomas L. Reed Jr.
- Published
- 1992
24. Juliana and the Figures of Rhetoric.
- Author
-
WINE, JOSEPH D.
- Subjects
- *
OLD English poetry , *RHETORIC in literature , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
The article discusses the Old English poem "Juliana" by Cynewulf, with particular focus given to its use of rhetoric and the assertion of critics including Rosemary Woolf that it is an inferior, shallow work compared to the poet's earlier output. The poem's religious and cultural themes are also commented on.
- Published
- 1992
25. Blasphemy or Blessing? Swift's 'Scatological' Poems.
- Author
-
Rodino, Richard H.
- Subjects
- *
SCATOLOGY in literature , *LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) - Abstract
The article provides an overview of criticism regarding the English poet Jonathan Swift's "scatological" poems, with particular focus given to critical reactions to their sexual, scatological, and misogynistic content. Poems including "The Progress of Beauty," "Strephon and Chloe," and "The Lady's Dressing Room" are commented on, and the application of psychoanalysis to Swiftian criticism is explored.
- Published
- 1978
26. The Structure of Sir Launfal.
- Author
-
Anderson, Earl R.
- Subjects
- *
INFLUENCE (Literary, artistic, etc.) , *MIDDLE English poetry , *POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERARY criticism - Abstract
The article discusses the Middle English poem "Sir Launfal" by Thomas Chestre, with particular focus given to the poem's relationship to its sources, the "Landevale" manuscript and the poem "Lanval, Graelent" by Marie de France. Chestre's use of structure and departures from his sources in style and content are also touched on.
- Published
- 1977
27. THEN AND NOW.
- Subjects
- *
LITERARY criticism , *POETRY (Literary form) , *AUTHORSHIP , *LITERATURE , *TRAVEL in literature - Abstract
The article offers criticism of the poems by Robert Brooke. Brooke's description of the sensations of viewing the Rockies in one of his travel papers is provided. His poems reflect his view of life as a fleeting, restless, dizzying, rapturous and evanishing experience. The article notes that Brooke's poetry is concerned with the fruits of existence and not its flowers.
- Published
- 2011
Discovery Service for Jio Institute Digital Library
For full access to our library's resources, please sign in.