Illuminating and original, The Glass Essayist takes the full measure of Anne Carson's achievement to date, from early commentaries on Greek poetry, through poems, translations, essays, lectures, and multi-media collaborations. Via dazzling close readings, Coles makes a bold, compelling argument about Carson's notorious reflexivity, anachronism, and parody in responding to classical and modern writers: these modes reveal 'the unsanctioned emotional life of scholarship,' exposing what is at stake in reading itself. With implications for debates about lyric, translation, performativity, and criticism after critique, this is a work of profound critical sympathy and insight.
Elizabeth Sarah Coles is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. She studied at the University of Cambridge, winning the Wood-Whistler Medal and Scholarship, and at Queen Mary, University of London. She is co-editor of Wild Analysis (2022).
