Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry
Wiley Blackwell Reading Poetry Series

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Language: English
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304 p. · 16.3x23.9 cm · Paperback

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry recaptures for modern readers the urgency, distinctiveness and rewarding nature of this challenging and powerful body of poetry.

  • An essential guide to reading eighteenth-century poetry, written by world-renowned critic, Patricia Meyer Spacks
  • Exposes the multiplicity of forms, tones, and topics engaged by poets during this period
  • Provides in-depth analysis of poems by established figures such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, as well as work by less familiar figures, including Anne Finch and Mary Leapor
  • A broadly chronological structure incorporates close reading alongside insightful contextual and historical detail
  • Captures the power and uniqueness of eighteenth-century poetry, creating an ideal guide for those returning to this period, or delving into it for the first time

Preamble.

1 How to Live: The Moral and the Social.

2 Matters of Feeling: Poetry of Emotion.

3 The Power of Detail: Description in Verse.

4 High Language and Low: The Diction of Poetry.

5 Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

6 How to Live: The Place of Work.

7 Matters of Feeling: Forms of the Personal.

8 Structures of Energy, Structures of Leisure: Ode and Blank Verse.

9 Old Poetry, Old Language: Imitation and Fraud.

10 Outliers: Mary Leapor and Christopher Smart.

11 How to Live: Poetry and Politics.

12 Matters of Feeling: Emotion Celebrated.

13 Narrative and Reflection.

14 Poetic Languages: Diction Old and New.

15 Mary Robinson and William Cowper.

Bibliography.

Index.

Intended for advanced undergraduates, post-graduates, and specialists. Appropriate for all upper-division and graduate courses in eighteenth-century poetry.
PATRICIA MEYER SPACKS is Edgar F. Shannon Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Virginia. She is the author of numerous books, and amongst other honors, was Vice President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2001-2006.