`subtle and wide-ranging investigation of the parenthesis in English poetry ... The excellences of Lennard's study are too many and, in many cases, too delicate to be easily stated. In its combination of the interpretive and historical study of punctuation, it may prove to be one of those rare books actually to invent, rather than merely to further, a field of study ... such a rich and rare one that the verve of his readings occasionally outstrips their self-evident cogency.'Durham University Journal

• History and terminology; 1494-1640 - translating into print; Marvell etc - genre, religion and modes of reading; 1680-1780 - the dislike of dubiety; a philosophy of moonshine - Coleridge, memory and imagination; 1810-1918 - reassertions of human scale (Burke, Sterne, Cobbett, Byron, Browning, Arnold, Hopkins, Owen); in eliot's penumbra - time and absence; 1942- - the modern range; definitions and theses (methodologies, histories, psychologies)

`subtle and wide-ranging investigation of the parenthesis in English poetry ... The excellences of Lennard's study are too many and, in many cases, too delicate to be easily stated. In its combination of the interpretive and historical study of punctuation, it may prove to be one of those rare books actually to invent, rather than merely to further, a field of study ... such a rich and rare one that the verve of his readings occasionally outstrips their self-evident cogency.'Durham University Journal

• History and terminology; 1494-1640 - translating into print; Marvell etc - genre, religion and modes of reading; 1680-1780 - the dislike of dubiety; a philosophy of moonshine - Coleridge, memory and imagination; 1810-1918 - reassertions of human scale (Burke, Sterne, Cobbett, Byron, Browning, Arnold, Hopkins, Owen); in eliot's penumbra - time and absence; 1942- - the modern range; definitions and theses (methodologies, histories, psychologies)