The Oxford History Of Poetry In English

Author : Helen Cooper
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192886738
Total Pages : 668 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (928 download)

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Download or read book The Oxford History of Poetry in English written by Helen Cooper and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Poetry in English is designed to offer a fresh, multi-voiced, and comprehensive analysis of 'poetry': from Anglo-Saxon culture through contemporary British, Irish, American, and Global culture, including English, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, Anglo-American colonial and post-colonial poetry, and poetry in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia, and other international locales. The series both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge research, employing a global team of expert contributors for each of the fourteen volumes. This volume occupies both a foundational and a revolutionary place. Its opening date—1100—marks the re-emergence of a vernacular poetic record in English after the political and cultural disruption of the Norman Conquest. By its end date—1400—English poetry had become an established, if still evolving, literary tradition. The period between these dates sees major innovations and developments in language, topics, poetic forms, and means of expression. Middle English poetry reflects the influence of multiple contexts—history, social institutions, manuscript production, old and new models of versification, medieval poetic theory, and the other literary languages of England. It thus emphasizes the aesthetic, imaginative treatment of new and received materials by medieval writers and the formal craft required for their verse. Individual chapters treat the representation of national history and mythology, contemporary issues, and the shared doctrine and learning provided by sacred and secular sources, including the Bible. Throughout the period, lyric and romance figure prominently as genres and poetic modes, while some works hover enticingly on the boundary of genre and discursive forms. The volume ends with chapters on the major writers of the late fourteenth-century (Langland, the Gawain-poet, Chaucer, and Gower) and with a look forward to the reception of something like a national literary tradition in fifteenth-century literary culture.