English Verse: Voice and Movement from Wyatt to Yeats, Volume 2Cambridge U.P., 1967 - 324 pages Every poet has a characteristic tone of voice, and his own rhythm. The author's chief interest is this 'sound poems make in the head', and his particular gift is to help us to hear what is going on in the individual poem, and to catch the poet's individuality. We also hear how each poet develops the forms his predecessors have used. In this way, we move from a consideration of single voices to the development of particular forms (like the couplet or blank verse) and the characteristics of whole periods. This book, then, has several uses. While verse as sound is its main concern, it can be read as an introductory history of English verse from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Since the author quotes generously, he also provides as he goes along an unhackneyed anthology in chronological order. In addition, he comments in detail on many of the poems, so that the book is a demonstration of the methods and uses of practical criticism. |
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Page 14
... stanza has some specimens of the sort of word- play ( faultless fayth , faithlesse fere ) which we have already noted beginning in Wyatt . Spenser's most important work is , of course , the huge allegorical poem The Faerie Queene ...
... stanza has some specimens of the sort of word- play ( faultless fayth , faithlesse fere ) which we have already noted beginning in Wyatt . Spenser's most important work is , of course , the huge allegorical poem The Faerie Queene ...
Page 210
... stanza : Are driven ... ... the leaves dead Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her Clarion ... and especially the sentence : ' there are spread ... the locks of the approaching storm ' . The image about the clouds , leaves and ...
... stanza : Are driven ... ... the leaves dead Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her Clarion ... and especially the sentence : ' there are spread ... the locks of the approaching storm ' . The image about the clouds , leaves and ...
Page 221
... stanza , whose culminating alexandrine draws our eyes after the thin cloud . In the second stanza we are made to feel the old man's laboured movements ; we have to pause , as he pauses : Then takes his lamp , and riseth from his knees ...
... stanza , whose culminating alexandrine draws our eyes after the thin cloud . In the second stanza we are made to feel the old man's laboured movements ; we have to pause , as he pauses : Then takes his lamp , and riseth from his knees ...
Contents
Blank Verse | 25 |
The Seventeenth Century | 58 |
The Eighteenth Century | 117 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. E. Housman alliteration Balaam beauty Blake blank verse Boston Evening Transcript breath called Comus couplet dark dead death Donne Donne's doth dramatic dream Dryden earth eternal eyes fall feel flowers Gorboduc GUIDERIUS hath hear heart heaven Henry Purcell heroic couplet Hopkins human imagination inscape Keats kind King lady lines living look Lord lyric man's meaning melody Milton mind Muses nature nature's never night o'er passage play pleasure poem poet poet's poetic poetry Pre-Raphaelite Prufrock quotation reader rhetoric rhyme rhythm romantic Samian wine sense Shakespeare sing sleep smile song sonnet sort soul sound speech Spenser spirit spring sprung rhythm stanza stresses sweet syllables symbol T. S. Eliot taste thee theme thine things thou thought trees truth tune turn verb voice wind words Wordsworth writing Yeats