Classic Writings on Poetry

Published by Columbia University Press 2005

Classic Writings on Poetry

Edited by: William Harmon

https://doi.org/10.7312/harm12370

Overview
Contents

About this book

The first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Spanning thousands of years and including some of the most influential critical essays ever written, this is a collection of influential writings on poetry ranging from Aristotle to Laura (Riding) Jackson.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Poet"

"[The poet] is a seer.... he is individual... he is complete in himself.... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus. "—Walt Whitman, from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgment, and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's essay "The Poet" and Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass serve as more than a critical "call and response": the works are striking examples of how the finest poets themselves have written on poetics and the works of their peers and predecessors—revealing, in the process, much about the theory and passion behind their own works.

Spanning thousands of years and including thirty-three of the most influential critical essays ever written, Classic Writings on Poetry is the first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Beginning with a survey of the history of poetics and providing an introduction and brief biography for each reading, esteemed poet and critic William Harmon takes readers from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to the Norse mythology of Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál. John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Shelley's A Defence of Poetry are included, as is an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh, arriving, finally, at the modernist sensibility of "Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality," by Laura (Riding) Jackson. For anyone interested in the art and artifice of poetry, Classic Writings on Poetry is a journey well worth taking.

Author / Editor information

Poet, critic, and anthologist, William Harmon is the James Gordon Hanes Professor in the Humanities (English and Comparative Literature) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, The Top 500 Poems, and The Classic Hundred Poems, all published by Columbia, as well as The Oxford Book of American Light Verse.

Reviews

Harmon presents a fine collection in the study of poetics—i.e., the study of what poetry is, and should be—from classical antiquity into the early 20th century.... Recommended.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
1. Plato Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Aristotle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
3. Horace Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
4. Publius Cornelius Tacitus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
5. Longinus(?) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
6. Snorri Sturluson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
7. Sir Philip Sidney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
8. John Milton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
9. John Dryden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
10. Alexander Pope Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
11. Samuel Johnson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
12. Thomas Gray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
13. William Wordsworth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
14. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
15. Francis Jeffrey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
16. William Hazlitt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
17. Thomas Love Peacock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317
18. George Gordon, Lord Byron Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
19. Percy Bysshe Shelley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
20. William Cullen Bryant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	375
21. John Keats Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
22. Ralph Waldo Emerson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	385
23. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405
24. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	423
25. Edgar Allan Poe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	429
26. Walt Whitman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	441
27. Matthew Arnold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	461
28. Emily Dickinson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	485
29. Rudyard Kipling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	493
30. Ezra Pound Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	507
31. T. S. Eliot Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	519
32. Laura (Riding) Jackson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	527

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 560

eBook

Published: April 13, 2005
ISBN: 9780231503228