English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More Information

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More Information Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY Poetry written in English is uniquely powerful and suggestive in its capacity to surprise, unsettle, shock, console and move. The Cambridge History of English Poetry offers sparklingly fresh and dynamic readings of an extraordinary range of poets and poems from Beowulf to Alice Oswald. An international team of experts explores how poets in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland use language and to what effect, examining questions of form, tone and voice; they comment, too, on how formal choices are inflected by the poet’s time and place. The Cambridge History of English Poetry is the most comprehensive and authoritative history of the field from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. It traces patterns of con- tinuity, transformation, transition and development. Covering a remarkable array of poets and poems, and featuring an extensive bibliography, the scope and depth of this major work of reference make it required reading for anyone interested in poetry. M ICHAEL O’N EILL is Professor of English at Durham University. He has published widely on poetry and is a published poet himself. His recent publications include The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American and Irish Poetry (2007)and Wheel (2008), a collection of poems. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY * Edited by MICHAEL O’NEILL © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521883061 © Cambridge University Press 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2010 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-521-88306-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information Contents Notes on contributors x Acknowledgments xvi Introduction 1 michael o’neill 1 . Old English poetry 7 bernard o’donoghue 2 . The Gawain-poet and medieval romance 26 corinne saunders 3 . Late fourteenth-century poetry (Chaucer, Gower, Langland and their legacy) 43 wendy scase 4 . Langland: Piers Plowman 63 a. v. c. schmidt 5 . Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales 81 laura varnam 6 . Late medieval literature in Scotland: Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas 96 felicity riddy 7 . Sixteenth-century poetry: Skelton, Wyatt and Surrey 115 elizabeth heale v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information List of contents 8 . Spenser 136 andrew hadfield 9 . Sidney, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan sonnet and lyric 154 katharine a. craik 10 . The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare 173 paul edmondson 11 . Seventeenth-century poetry 1: poetry in the age of Donne and Jonson 192 jonathan post 12 . Seventeenth-century poetry 2: Herbert, Vaughan, Philips, Cowley, Crashaw, Marvell 211 alison shell 13 . Milton’s shorter poems 231 barbara k. lewalski 14 . Milton: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes 255 barbara k. lewalski 15 . Restoration poetry: Behn, Dryden and their contemporaries 281 hester jones 16 . Dryden: major poems 299 steven n. zwicker 17 . Swift 318 claude rawson 18 . Poetry of the first half of the eighteenth century: Pope, Johnson and the couplet 333 claude rawson 19 . Eighteenth-century women poets 358 christine gerrard vi © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information List of contents 20 . Longer eighteenth-century poems (Akenside, Thomson, Young, Cowper and others) 378 richard terry 21 . Lyric poetry: 1740–1790 397 david fairer 22 . Romantic poetry: an overview 418 seamus perry 23 . Blake’s poetry and prophecies 440 john beer 24 . Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads and other poems 456 timothy webb 25 . Wordsworth’s The Prelude and The Excursion 470 alison hickey 26 . Second-generation Romantic poetry 1: Hunt, Byron, Moore 487 jane stabler 27 . Byron’s Don Juan 506 bernard beatty 28 . Second-generation Romantic poetry 2: Shelley and Keats 524 michael o’neill 29 . Third-generation Romantic poetry: Beddoes, Clare, Darley, Hemans, Landon 542 michael bradshaw 30 . Women poets of the Romantic period (Barbauld to Landon) 561 heidi thomson vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information List of contents 31 . Victorian poetry: an overview 576 richard cronin 32 . Tennyson 596 robert douglas-fairhurst 33 . Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning 617 herbert f. tucker 34 . Emily Brontë, Arnold, Clough 635 michael o’neill 35 . Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Swinburne 649 david g. riede 36 . Christina Rossetti and Hopkins 669 catherine phillips 37 . Later Victorian voices 1: James Thomson, Symons, Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Housman 686 nicholas shrimpton 38 . Later Victorian voices 2: Davidson, Kipling, ‘Michael Field’ (Bradley and Cooper), Lee-Hamilton, Kendall, Webster 706 francis o’gorman 39 . Modernist and modern poetry: an overview 725 jason harding 40 . Hardy and Mew 746 ralph pite 41 . Yeats 767 peter vassallo 42 . Imagism 787 vincent sherry viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information List of contents 43 . T. S. Eliot 807 gareth reeves 44 . Owen, Rosenberg, Sassoon and Edward Thomas 824 mark rawlinson 45 . Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Spender: the thirties poetry 844 michael o’neill 46 . Dylan Thomas and poetry of the 1940s 858 john goodby 47 . Larkin and the Movement 879 stephen regan 48 . Three twentieth-century women poets: Riding, Smith, Plath 897 alice entwistle 49 . Hughes and Heaney 918 edward larrissy 50 . Hill 936 andrew michael roberts 51 . Mahon, Longley, Muldoon, McGuckian, Carson, Boland and other Irish poets 956 stephen regan 52 . Contemporary poetries in English, c.1980 to the present 1: the radical tradition 970 peter barry 53 . Contemporary poetries in English, c.1980 to the present 2 988 jamie mckendrick Bibliography 1005 Index 1038 ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information Notes on contributors P ETER B ARRY is Professor of English at Aberystwyth University. His most recent books are Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court (2006) and Literature in Contexts (2007). B ERNARD B EATTY is Senior Fellow in the School of English at the University of Liverpool and Associate Fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Byron’s Don Juan (1985) and Byron’s Don Juan and Other Poems (1987), and edited The Byron Journal from 1988 to 2005. J OHN B EER is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. His books include Blake’s Humanism (1968), Blake’s Visionary Universe (1969), Romantic Consciousness: Blake to Mary Shelley (2003), Post-Romantic Consciousness: Dickens to Plath (2003), Romantic Influences (1993) and William Blake: A Literary Life (2005). M ICHAEL B RADSHAW is the author of Resurrection Songs: The Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (2001), the co-editor with Ute Berns of The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Lovell Beddoes (2007) and has edited Beddoes’s Death’s Jest-Book: the 1829 Text (2003) and Selected Poetry (1999). He is currently Professor of English at Edge Hill University. K ATHARINE A. CRAIK is Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. She has published widely on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and her book Reading Sensations in Early Modern England appeared in 2007. R ICHARD C RONIN is Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow. His most recent book is Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824–1840 (2002). R OBERT D OUGLAS-FAIRHURST is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature (2002), and has edited Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ and Other Christmas Books (2006) and Great Expectations (2008), and co-edited, with Seamus Perry, Tennyson among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays (2009). He is currently writing a book about Dickens’s early career. P AUL E DMONDSON is Head of Learning and Research at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Recommended publications
  • Corpus Christi College the Pelican Record
    CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE THE PELICAN RECORD Vol. LI December 2015 CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE THE PELICAN RECORD Vol. LI December 2015 i The Pelican Record Editor: Mark Whittow Design and Printing: Lynx DPM Limited Published by Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2015 Website: http://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk Email: [email protected] The editor would like to thank Rachel Pearson, Julian Reid, Sara Watson and David Wilson. Front cover: The Library, by former artist-in-residence Ceri Allen. By kind permission of Nick Thorn Back cover: Stone pelican in Durham Castle, carved during Richard Fox’s tenure as Bishop of Durham. Photograph by Peter Rhodes ii The Pelican Record CONTENTS President’s Report ................................................................................... 3 President’s Seminar: Casting the Audience Peter Nichols ............................................................................................ 11 Bishop Foxe’s Humanistic Library and the Alchemical Pelican Alexandra Marraccini ................................................................................ 17 Remembrance Day Sermon A sermon delivered by the President on 9 November 2014 ....................... 22 Corpuscle Casualties from the Second World War Harriet Fisher ............................................................................................. 27 A Postgraduate at Corpus Michael Baker ............................................................................................. 34 Law at Corpus Lucia Zedner and Liz Fisher ....................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • (Mael 502) Semester Ii British Poetry Ii
    PROGRAMME CODE: MAEL 20 SEMESTER I BRITISH POETRY I (MAEL 502) SEMESTER II BRITISH POETRY II (MAEL 506) SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES Uttarakhand Open University PROGRAMME CODE: MAEL 20 SEMESTER I BRITISH POETRY I (MAEL 502) SEMESTER II BRITISH POETRY II (MAEL 506) SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES Uttarakhand Open University Phone no. 05964-261122, 261123 Toll Free No. 18001804025 Fax No. 05946-264232, e-mail info @uou.ac.in http://uou.ac.in Board of Studies Prof. H. P. Shukla (Chairperson) Prof. S. A. Hamid (Retd.) Director Dept. of English School of Humanities Kumaun University Uttarakhand Open University Nainital Haldwani Prof. D. R. Purohit Prof. M.R.Verma Senior Fellow Dept. of English Indian Institute of Advanced Study Gurukul Kangri University Shimla, Himanchal Pradesh Haridwar Programme Developers and Editors Dr. H. P. Shukla Dr. Suchitra Awasthi (Coordinator) Professor, Dept. of English Assistant Professor Director, School of Humanities Dept. of English Uttarakhand Open University Uttarakhand Open University Unit Writers Dr. Suchitra Awasthi, Uttarakhand Open University, Haldwani Semester I: Units 1,2,3,4,5, Semester II: Unit 7 Dr. Binod Mishra, IIT, Roorkee Semester I: Units 6,7,8,9 Dr. Preeti Gautam, Govt. P.G. College, Rampur Semester II: Units 1, 2 Mr. Rohitash Thapliyal, Graphic Era Hill University, Bhimtal Semester II: Units 3,4,5 Dr. Mohit Mani Tripathi, D.A.V. College, Kanpur Semester II: Unit 6 Edition: 2020 ISBN : 978-93-84632-13-7 Copyright: Uttarakhand Open University, Haldwani Published by: Registrar, Uttarakhand Open University, Haldwani
    [Show full text]
  • A MEDIUM for MODERNISM: BRITISH POETRY and AMERICAN AUDIENCES April 1997-August 1997
    A MEDIUM FOR MODERNISM: BRITISH POETRY AND AMERICAN AUDIENCES April 1997-August 1997 CASE 1 1. Photograph of Harriet Monroe. 1914. Archival Photographic Files Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) was born in Chicago and pursued a career as a journalist, art critic, and poet. In 1889 she wrote the verse for the opening of the Auditorium Theater, and in 1893 she was commissioned to compose the dedicatory ode for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Monroe’s difficulties finding publishers and readers for her work led her to establish Poetry: A Magazine of Verse to publish and encourage appreciation for the best new writing. 2. Joan Fitzgerald (b. 1930). Bronze head of Ezra Pound. Venice, 1963. On Loan from Richard G. Stern This portrait head was made from life by the American artist Joan Fitzgerald in the winter and spring of 1963. Pound was then living in Venice, where Fitzgerald had moved to take advantage of a foundry which cast her work. Fitzgerald made another, somewhat more abstract, head of Pound, which is in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Pound preferred this version, now in the collection of Richard G. Stern. Pound’s last years were lived in the political shadows cast by his indictment for treason because of the broadcasts he made from Italy during the war years. Pound was returned to the United States in 1945; he was declared unfit to stand trial on grounds of insanity and confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for thirteen years. Stern’s novel Stitch (1965) contains a fictional account of some of these events.
    [Show full text]
  • Time, Transience and Permanence in Thomas Hardys Poetry
    TIME, TRANSIENCE AND PERMANENCE IN THOMAS HARDY’S POETRY N A I e scholarly critic, when assessing the life and works of a famous writer, must use the most delicate of critical tools to sort and divide a liter- ary oeuvre. Texts must be carefully catalogued and designated in order of importance, yet they must also be constantly re-evaluated and challenged as the passing of time and improved historical data aords later readers a clearer, more panoramic view. Similarly, commercially successful or unsuc- cessful works which critics judge to presage or bookend a literary career can also come to oversimplify a popular understanding of a writer’s literary development and purpose. e literary life of the Dorset writer omas Hardy is oen judged in such commercial terms, and can be seen as span- ning the publication of two of his most famous novels. In 1874, the success of Far From the Madding Crowd allowed Hardy to give up his work as an architect for writing, and its publication launched his literary career. Over twenty years later, the 1895 publication of Jude the Obscure saw Hardy en- dure a welter of social criticism, and this coincided with his decision to give up writing novels and shi his focus to poetry. While Hardy is consid- ered to be one of the greatest English novelists, however, his poetry took much longer to achieve critical success, his verse being considered by some as merely a reaction to the critical failure of Jude. Conversely, Hardy saw himself primarily as a poet and during his lifetime produced a vast body of verse that was strikingly uniform in its thematic approach towards time and memory.
    [Show full text]
  • Scottish Literature and Periodization Juliet Shields University of Washington
    Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 43 | Issue 1 Article 2 5-1-2017 Introduction: Scottish Literature and Periodization Juliet Shields University of Washington Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Shields, Juliet (2017) "Introduction: Scottish Literature and Periodization," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 43: Iss. 1, 3–7. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol43/iss1/2 This Symposium is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INTRODUCTION: SCOTTISH LITERATURE AND PERIODIZATION Juliet Shields The way we organize the study of literature is changing. Until comparatively recently, it was normative for scholars to specialize in the literature of a particular time and place—for instance Victorian Britain or Colonial America—and for English majors to take survey courses that traced the development of a national literature over time, in addition to classes on genres, topics, or methodological approaches. Diminishing budgets and increasingly globalized campuses, among other factors, have begun to challenge this diachronic model of disciplinary organization. Periodization has also come under theoretical scrutiny, with Ted Underwood and others arguing that it is neither a natural nor an inevitable way to organize our discipline. As just one alternative to periodization among many, Underwood points to “the discipline of history itself, where the looser concept of ‘area’ occupies the institutional role that periods occupy in literary studies.”1 This symposium examines the role that periodization plays in shaping our understanding of Scottish literary history.
    [Show full text]
  • A Legendary Poet
    / Faculty Obituaries / A Legendary Poet Geoff rey Hill, lauded for his deep and complex verse | BY MARA SASSOON Sir Geoff rey Hill’s poetry— was the original Oxford University in 1953, often called “allusive” for its idea, 20 years ago, where he earned a degree esoteric religious, philosoph- for an Editorial in English and had his fi rst ical, and historical referenc- Institute to award work published by the poet es—earned him reverence degrees, doctoral and literary critic Donald in the literary community. and master’s, in Hall. After graduation, he Nicholas Lezard, a critic for editorial studies,” taught at the University The Guardian, hailed him says Ricks. of Leeds until 1980, when as “the greatest living poet Hill was known he completed a yearlong in the history of the English for his turns of Churchill Scholarship at the language” in a 2001 review phrases and quick University of Bristol. He was of Hill’s long poem Speech! humor in every- then a lecturer at Emmanuel Speech! and in a 2013 review day conversation. College, Cambridge. of his collection Broken Hier- Ricks says his In 1988, he moved to the archies: Poems 1952–2012. favorite anecdote United States when he ac- Hill, 84, a University Pro- is when Hill “was cepted a professorship at fessor emeritus and a College asked how he felt BU, where he taught for 18 of Arts & Sciences professor about a critic’s years. His multidisciplinary emeritus of literature and having won a prize expertise—he taught courses religion, died on June 30, for an essay on his not only on poetry, but also 2016, the same day his new work.
    [Show full text]
  • The End of the Word in Geoffrey Hill's Poetry
    CONSUMMATUM EST: THE END OF THE WORD IN GEOFFREY HILL’S POETRY THOMAS MICHAEL DOCHERTY PEMBROKE COLLEGE DECEMBER 2017 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. CONSUMMATUM EST: THE END OF THE WORD IN GEOFFREY HILL’S POETRY THOMAS MICHAEL DOCHERTY This thesis intends to demonstrate that the idea of the end is a crucial motive of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry. It analyses the verbal and formal means by which Hill attempts to have his poems arrive at ends. The ends are, chiefly, the reconciliation of antagonists in word or thought; and the perfect articulation of the poem. The acknowledgement of failure to achieve such ends provides its own impetus to Hill’s work. The thesis examines in detail Hill’s puns, word-games, rhymes, syntaxes, and genres — their local reconciliations and entrenched contrarieties — and claims for them a significant place in the study of Hill’s poetry, particularly with regard to its sustained concern with ends and endings. Little has been written to date about Hill’s entire poetic corpus as represented in Broken Hierarchies (2013), due to the recentness of the work. This thesis draws from the earliest to the latest of Hill’s poetic writings; and makes extensive use of archival material. It steps beyond the ‘historical drama’ of language depicted in Matthew Sperling’s Visionary Philology (2014) and Alex Pestell’s Geoffrey Hill: The Drama of Reason (2016) and asserts that the drama in Hill’s poetry, seeking to transcend history, is constantly related to its end: not only its termination in time but its consummating purpose.
    [Show full text]
  • Ann Hassan's Annotations to Geoffrey Hill's Speech!
    Annotations to Geoffrey Hill's Speech! Speech! ANN HASSAN Annotations to Geoffrey Hill’s Speech! Speech! Annotations to Geoffrey Hill’s Speech! Speech! Ann Hassan Glossator Special Editions ANNOTATIONS TO GEOFFREY HILL’S SPEECH! SPEECH! © Ann Hassan, 2012. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0, or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This work is ‘Open Access,’ which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that you in no way alter, transform, or build upon the work outside of its normal use in academic scholarship without express permission of the author and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. First published in 2012 by Glossator Special Editions, an imprint of punctum books (Brooklyn, NY) for Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary (glossator.org). Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia. The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Poems: from Modernism to Now
    Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now Edited by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now, Edited by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4124-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4124-5 Published with the support of Université de Caen-Basse Normandie (ERIBIA EA 2610) and of Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (CREA EA 370) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: “Let us go then, you and I”............................................................. 1 Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 5 “Dear Shade”: Louis MacNeice Selected and Recollected Susan Ang Chapter Two ...................................................................................................................23 Evaluating the Status of Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos David Ten Eyck Chapter Three ................................................................................................................41
    [Show full text]
  • Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns WILLIAM S
    Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns WILLIAM S. MILNE N Mercian Hymns (1971) Geoffrey Hill discovers in the history and topography of his native West Midlands a Iparticular rhythm of life which he succeeds in conveying in the poem by an informing mythology and an analogous prose rhythm. He builds his poem around the figure of Offa who is not only the eighth century king of historical fact but also the imaginatively-conceived "presiding genius of the West Midlands."1 Hill praised George Eliot, the great novelist of the West Midlands, for being "a writer with a fine sense of traditional life" and in discussing a passage from Chapter 18 of Adam Bede, in which Adam listens to the "recurrent responses, and the familiar rhythm" of Anglican hymns or "collects", he generalized upon the subject of rhythm, adumbrating ideas which are directly relevant to his poetic method in Mercian Hymns: The responses are to be understood both as recurring within the limited time-span of a particular Anglican evensong, following the established pattern of the rubric, and as recurring over an implied and indefinite number of years, recurring Sunday by Sunday, season by season, year after year. It is by such means that "channels" are created; by the joint working of abrasion and continuity. "Responses" is the correct term for the established form of congregational participation in the liturgy. At the same time, over and below this literal meaning, the word connotes the continuity of human response in general to an ancient process of parochial and national life. The collects of the Anglican Church are composed of liturgical prose; they could properly be said to possess rhythm, though not metre .
    [Show full text]
  • A Reading of Geoffrey Hill's a Treatise of Civil Power
    1 The Redemption of History: A Reading of Geoffrey Hill’s A Treatise of Civil Power Geoffrey Hill practises a kind of aesthetic austerity of style in A Treatise of Civil Power (2005/2007) that in the end must be reckoned a part of its meaning, its vision of the body politic, power, and culture.1 Three elements combine in this respect: difficulty (so called), the constraining or tamping down of the lyric voice, and subject-matter. In relation to Hill “difficulty” is a hoary trope, and should not be exaggerated here. A good number of the thirty-one poems present only a modest level of difficulty to the patient reader; however, others, such as “On Reading Milton and the English Revolution” and “A Précis or Memorandum of Civil Power,” are challenging, and their challenge, a deliberate recalcitrance to easy- 1 A Treatise of Civil Power exists in three versions: (1) the original limited-edition pamphlet, Clutag Press, Thame (2005); (2) the version published by Yale University Press in the US and Penguin in the UK (2007); and the version quoted here, in Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952–2012, ed. Kenneth Haynes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 557–601. The essential argument and vision of the collection— my main concern—is the same in the different versions. (2) and (3) do not vary much: (3) shortens “On Reading Crowds and Power” to its first verse-paragraph, deleting the three other sections, and leaves out altogether “On Reading Burke on Empire, Liberty and Reform.” When I refer to the latter, I use the Penguin text.
    [Show full text]
  • Job Description and Selection Criteria
    Job Description and Selection Criteria Post Professorship of Poetry Department/Faculty Faculty of English Language and Literature Division Humanities College All Souls, or another college by agreement Overview of the post The Professorship of Poetry is due to become vacant in Michaelmas Term 2015, when the current incumbent, Professor Sir Geoffrey Hill, reaches the end of his term of office. The appointment to re-fill the Chair will be made by election of Convocation in Trinity Term 2015. All members of Convocation are eligible to vote in the election1. The elected candidate will hold office for four years from 11 October 2015, the first day of Michaelmas Term 2015. The Professor of Poetry lectures were conceived in 1708, as a result of a bequest by Berkshire landowner Henry BirKhead, who believed ‘the reading of the ancient poets gave Keenness and polish to the minds of young men as well as to the advancement of more serious literature both sacred and human’. Matthew Arnold, uniquely elected twice to the Professorship (in 1857 and 1862), created the Professorship in its modern form: Arnold spoKe about literary matters of contemporary concern, and was the first Professor to deliver his lectures in English, as opposed to Latin. The appointee will be the 45th Professor of Poetry (a full list of holders of the Chair is available at http://www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/professor-of-poetry). The professorship is held in the Faculty of English Language and Literature. The Faculty of English at Oxford University is the largest department of English Literature in the UK and is widely recognised as one of the most eminent in the world.
    [Show full text]