Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken

Author: Edward Butscher

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0820336203

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The first of a planned two-volume biography, Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale follows Aiken's early life from his birth in 1889 to 1925 when he stood on the threshold of both nervous breakdown and poetic success. It was then that Aiken began to face his paradoxically idyllic and tragic Savannah childhood and to confront the events of February 27, 1901. On that day, the eleven-year-old Aiken heard gunshots punctuate a nightlong argument between his mother and father. Running into the next room, he discovered his mother murdered and his father dead by suicide. Sounding the deep reverberations of those events in Aiken's mind, Edward Butscher follows the poet's life and work as he sought to regain, in some permanent form, the idyll he had lost as a child. Butscher tells of Aiken's determined efforts to gain recognition for his verse in the fevered cultural circuits of the early twentieth century—from his friendship, begun at Harvard, with T. S. Eliot, through frustrating excursions into the literary society of England and repeated trips on the poetic “trade route” from his home in Boston to Chicago and New York, to often sharp encounters with such powerful cultural barons as Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and Harriet Monroe. Hoping to build his reputation on a series of detached poetic “symphonies,” to keep depression from boiling over into madness and suicide, Aiken skirted the border of his deepest memories and fears—a border he would cross in the works that lay ahead.

A History of British, Irish and American Literature
A History of British, Irish and American Literature

Author: Hans-Peter Wagner

Publisher: WVT (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier)

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 3868219218

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The third revised and enlarged edition contains discussions of British, Irish and American literary works up to 2020. Focussing on outstanding writings in prose, poetry, drama and non-fiction, the book covers the time from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 21st century. The feature that makes this literary history unique among its rivals is the coverage of television/web series as a particular form of postmodern drama. The chapters on recent drama now contain detailed analyses of the development of TV and web series from Britain, Ireland and America, with extensive discussions of those series now considered classics. In addition, there are several major innovative features. To begin with, each century is introduced by a survey of the socio-political and cultural backgrounds in which the literary works are embedded. Furthermore, extensive visual material (more than 160 engravings, cartoons and paintings) has been integrated. This visual aspect as well as the introductory sections on art for each century give the reader an excellent idea of the symbiosis between visual and literary representations. Further innovative aspects include - discussions of non-fictional works from literary criticism and theory, travel writing, historiography, and the social sciences - analyses of such popular genres as crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, the Western, horror fiction, and children’s literature - footnotes explaining technical and historical terms and events - a detailed glossary of literary terms - chronological tables for British/Anglo-Irish and American literatures an updated (cut-off date 2020), extensive bibliography containing suggestions for further reading