Classical Genres And English Poetry Routledge Revivals

First published in 1988, this study explains how certain genres created by Classical poets were adapted and sometimes transformed by the poets of the modern world, beginning with the Tudor poets’ rediscovery of the Classical heritage. Most of the long-lived poetic genres are discussed, from familiar examples like the hymn, elegy and eulogy, to less familiar topics such as the recusatio (refusal to write certain kinds of poems), or formal structures such as priamel. By combining criticism with literary history, the author explores the degree to which certain poets were consciously imitating models, and demonstrates how various generic forms reflect the literary concerns of individual poets as well as the general concerns of their age. The poets discussed range over the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity, and in English from Wyatt to Yeats and Auden. A detailed and fascinating title, this study will appeal to teachers and students of both English and Classical literature.

First published in 1988, this study explains how certain genres created by Classical poets were adapted and sometimes transformed by the poets of the modern world, beginning with the Tudor poets’ rediscovery of the Classical heritage. Most of the long-lived poetic genres are discussed, from familiar examples like the hymn, elegy and eulogy, to less familiar topics such as the recusatio (refusal to write certain kinds of poems), or formal structures such as priamel. By combining criticism with literary history, the author explores the degree to which certain poets were consciously imitating models, and demonstrates how various generic forms reflect the literary concerns of individual poets as well as the general concerns of their age. The poets discussed range over the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity, and in English from Wyatt to Yeats and Auden. A detailed and fascinating title, this study will appeal to teachers and students of both English and Classical literature.

This study, first published in 1982, explores and demonstrates the ways in which an awareness of literary genre can illuminate works as diverse as Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ and Berryman’s Sonnets. The first book to offer a historical survey of genre theory, it traces the history from the Greek rhetoricians to such contemporary figures as Frye and Todorov. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which comments on genre reflect underlying aesthetic attitudes.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 1660-1780, originally published in 1981, considers poetry written between 1660 and 1780, a period which, although largely recovered from its nineteenth-century reputation, still attracts widely varying critical responses. Abandoning the old labels such as ‘neoclassicism’, ‘romanticism’ and ‘sensibility’, the author focuses on descriptions of genres and their formal elements and traces the broader patterns of literary and historical change running through the period. Eric Rothstein describes different poetic modes- panegyric, satire, pastoral and topographical poetry, the epistle, and the ode- to suggest their aesthetical possibilities as well as their process of change. He also considers style and the uses of the past, topics which have often caused particular problems for the students of the period. What becomes clear is the extraordinary originality, flexibility and power with which Restoration and eighteenth-century poets handles the stylistic assumptions and the body of poems they inherited and employed in their own works.

First published in 1933, this study, which underwent revision in the 1960s, is a comprehensive survey of the verse of English nineteenth-century poets whose work appeared after 1860. A special feature is the full and critical treatment of minor writers. In no other book is their work so carefully evaluated. There is a full account of the minor Pre-Raphaelites, of James Thomson, the poet of The City of Dreadful Night, of Henley, Stevenson and George MacDonald. John Davidson is the subject of a long and revealing study. Evans suggests that poetry from the late nineteenth century is neglected in scholarly study, and that Victorian Romanticism deserves more attention than it has recently received.

Two thousand years after his death Horace is still recognised as a unique poet, having exerted marked influence on later European literature. This collection, first published in 1973, explores the different aspects of Horace’s poetic achievement in his main works: the Odes, Epistles ̧ Satires and Ars Poetica. The essays, written by internationally-known scholars, include a discussion of the three worlds of the Satires, and a study of Horace’s poetic craft in the Odes – his greatest technical accomplishment. The final chapter is devoted entirely to Horace’s reputation in England up to the seventeenth century as ‘The Best of Lyrick Poets’, and concentrates on the many English translations which he inspired. The expert criticism is illustrated throughout by English translations from the original Latin texts. Horace will appeal to students and scholars of Latin poetry alike, as well as to those interested in the reception of classical literature throughout European history.

Ovid, Rome's most cynical and worldly love poet, has not until recently been highly regarded among Latin poets. Now, however, his reputation is growing, and this volume is an important contribution to the re-establishment of Ovid's claims to critical attention. This collection of essays ranges over a wide variety of themes and works: Ovid's development of the Elegiac tradition handed down to him from Propertius, Catullus and Tibullus; the often disparaged and neglected Heroides; the poetry of Ovid's miserable exile by the Black Sea; the poetic diction of the Metamorphoses, Ovid's lengthy mythological epic which codified classical myth and legend, and has strong claims to be considered, with the exception of Virgil's Aeneid, Rome's greatest epic poem; humour and the blending of the didactic and elegiac traditions in the Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris. Finally, Ovid's incomparable influence in the Middle Ages and sixteenth century is examined.