Dryden an Essay of Dramatic Poetry
Dryden an Essay of Dramatic Poetry

Author: Revised By William T. Arnold

Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9788171563234

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Dryden S Main Contribution To Literary Criticism Is Represented By An Essay Of Dramatic Poesy In Which In The Form Of A Lively Dialogue His Views On Drama Are Propounded. In This Landmark Of English Criticism, Dryden Examines Five Important Issues : The Relative Merits Of Ancient And Modern Poets, The French Versus The English School Of Drama, The Elizabethan Dramatists Versus Those Of Dryden S Own Time, Conformation To The Dramatic Rules Laid Down By The Ancients And The Question Of Substituting Rhyme For Blank Verse.Considering The Fact That Dryden Had No Settled Body Of English Criticism To Bank Upon, His Theorising On The Form Of Drama Is A Distinguished Achievement And Many Of The Issues Raised By Him Can By No Means Be Treated As Finally Decided. Dryden S Special Advantages Were A Strong, Clear, Common-Sense Judgement And A Very Remarkable Faculty Of Arguing The Point . Add To This His Intimate Knowledge Of Both Ancient And Modern Playwrights, Including The French Masters, And His Personal Initial Experiments In Writing Plays.Thomas Arnold S Explanatory Notes Make This Volume All The More Valuable To The Scholars And Students Of Dryden As A Critic. William T. Arnold In His Revision Of The Third Edition, Made The Notes Fuller And More Helpful By, Among Other Things, Adding Quotations From Corneille.

Classic Writings on Poetry
Classic Writings on Poetry

Author: William Harmon

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005-04-13

Total Pages: 555

ISBN-13: 0231503229

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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.