Kategoria BISAC: Poetry >> European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Since the Bible appears so frequently in Dylan Thomas' work, some critics have decided that he must be a religious poet. Others, noting blasphemous statements and certain irreligious aspects of Thomas' personal life, contend that he was no such thing. Rushworth M. Kidder, investigating this problem, looks below the surface of the obviously religious imagery and discovers a more profound poetry.

The first part of this book discusses the nature of religious poetry and the application of that term to Thomas' work; it then develops the necessary background based on his letters and prose...

In this fresh look at Chaucer's relation to English and French romances of the late Middle Ages, Crane shows that Chaucer's depictions of masculinity and femininity constitute an extensive and sympathetic response to the genre. For Chaucer, she proposes, gender is the defining concern of romance. As the foundational narratives of courtship, romances participate in the late medieval elaboration of new meanings around heterosexual identity. Crane draws on feminist and genre theory to argue that Chaucer's profound interest in the cultural construction of masculinity and femininity arises in...

In 1989, the centenary of his death, Gerard Manley Hopkins continues to provoke fundamental questions among scholars: what major poetic strategy informs his work and how did his reflections on the nature of poetry affect his writing? While form meant a great deal to Hopkins, it was never mere form. Maria Lichtmann demonstrates that the poet, a student of Scripture all his life, adopted Scripture's predominant form--parallelism--as his own major poetic strategy. Hopkins saw that parallelism struck deep into the heart and soul, tapping into unconscious rhythms and bringing about a healing...

The Psalms were of intense interest to Milton, who read them not only as impassioned voices conveying significant moments in life's journey, but also as examples of various genres, each containing rhetorical and poetical conventions appropriate to the expressive intent of the speaker. In this book Mary Ann Radzinowicz describes the pervasive influence of these biblical works on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. She shows that the dramatic moments when Milton's characters respond to the numinous are shaped by his appreciation of the lyricism of the Psalms and by his studies of their...

The focus of this study is on the working of Milton's sensibilities and the reader's response to the materials of the poem. Professor Shumaker demonstrates the special resonance Milton gave to Paradise Lost through his development of its mythic quality and through the emotive patterns in the poem. Shumaker describes the effect on the reader's subconscious responses of Milton's choice of visual and auditory images. Underlying the treatment is an assumption that during the act of composition the poet's mind is often stirred to its depths and registers with astonishing fidelity what is...