Craig Raine – författare

The winner of the Nobel Trize for Literature, the twentieth century's most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult poet--forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic. Now, in this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot's work, prize-winning poet Craig Raine reveals that, on the contrary, Eliot's poetry (and drama and criticism) can be seen as a unified and coherent body of work. Indeed, despite its manifest originality, its radical experimentation, and its dazzling formal variety, his verse yields meaning just as surely as other more conventional poetry. Raine argues that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot's work. But alongside Eliot's desire "to live with all intensity" was also a distrust of "violent emotion for its own sake." Raine illuminates this paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of such poems as "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and many others. The heart of the book contains extended analyses of Eliot's two master works--The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Raine also examines Eliot's criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination--and he concludes with a convincing refutation of charges that Eliot was an anti-Semite. Here then is a volume absolutely indispensable for all admirers of T.S. Eliot and, in fact, for everyone who loves modern literature.

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the twentieth century''s most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult poet--forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic. Now, in this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot''s work, prize-winning poet Craig Raine reveals that, on the contrary, Eliot''s poetry (and drama and criticism) can be seen as a unified and coherent body of work. Indeed, despite its manifest originality, its radical experimentation, and its dazzling formal variety, his verse yields meaning just as surely as other more conventional poetry. Raine argues that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot''s work. But alongside Eliot''s desire "to live with all intensity" was also a distrust of "violent emotion for its own sake." Raine illuminates this paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of such poems as "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and many others. The heart of the book contains extended analyses of Eliot''s two master works--The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Raine also examines Eliot''s criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination--and he concludes with a convincing refutation of charges that Eliot was an anti-Semite. Here then is a volume absolutely indispensable for all admirers of T.S. Eliot and, in fact, for everyone who loves modern literature.

The twentieth century's most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult writer-forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic. In this compelling exploration, prize-winning poet Craig Raine finds a way to read and make sense of Eliot's full corpus. He illuminates a paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of his poetry, with extended analyses of Eliot's two master works--The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Raine also examines Eliot's criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination, and his biography, crafting a book that provides a concise introduction for beginners and a provocative set of arguments for Eliot admirers.

Much more than a word list, the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is a browsable source of inspiration as well as an authoritative guide to selecting and using vocabulary. This essential guide for writers provides real-life example sentences and a careful selection of the most relevant synonyms, as well as new usage notes, hints for choosing between similar words, a Word Finder section organized by subject, and a comprehensive language guide. The text is alsopeppered with thought-provoking reflections on favorite (and not-so-favorite) words by noted contemporary writers, including Joshua Ferris, Francine Prose, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and SimonWinchester, many newly commissioned for this edition.The third edition revises and updates this innovative reference, adding hundreds of new words, senses, and phrases to its more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms. New features in this edition include over 200 literary and humorous quotations highlighting notable usages of words, and a revised graphical word toolkit feature showing common word combinations based on evidence in the Oxford Corpus. There is also a newintroduction by noted language commentator Ben Zimmer.

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the twentieth century''s most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult poet--forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic. Now, in this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot''s work, prize-winning poet Craig Raine reveals that, on the contrary, Eliot''s poetry (and drama and criticism) can be seen as a unified and coherent body of work. Indeed, despite its manifest originality, its radical experimentation, and its dazzling formal variety, his verse yields meaning just as surely as other more conventional poetry. Raine argues that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot''s work. But alongside Eliot''s desire "to live with all intensity" was also a distrust of "violent emotion for its own sake." Raine illuminates this paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of such poems as "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and many others. The heart of the book contains extended analyses of Eliot''s two master works--The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Raine also examines Eliot''s criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination--and he concludes with a convincing refutation of charges that Eliot was an anti-Semite. Here then is a volume absolutely indispensable for all admirers of T.S. Eliot and, in fact, for everyone who loves modern literature.

Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet. The Wish House and Other Stories is a collection of Kipling’s finest works, including the stories “In the House of Suddhoo,” “The Disturber of Traffic,” and “The Eye of Allah,” the poems “The Runners,” “The Return of the Children,” and “The Last Ode,” and his famous story about Afghanistan, “The Man Who Would Be King.” Each piece was selected by poet and scholar Craig Raine, who writes in his Preface, “We need to think about Kipling. He is our greatest short-story writer, but one whose achievement is more complex and surprising than even his admirers recognize.”From the Trade Paperback edition.

A selection of literary essays written since 1972, this book addresses in detail the work of Dickens, Donne, T. S. Eliot, Coleridge, Dr Johnson, Betjeman, Elizabeth Bishop, Saul Bellow, James Joyce, and many others. Vigilant, sceptical, mistrustful of consensus, Craig Raine stands in the tradition of poet-critics whose task, as Eliot said, is ‘the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste’.

His pieces, on the literary world and some of its most fascinating figures and classics, bear his hallmark of vitality and distinctive approach. Raine’s knowledge of the span of literary theory (and anecdote) and the incisiveness of his thinking uncover as far more contradictory and complex in their successes writers customarily held in reverence. The essays range from a powerful piece on the KGB’s literary archive to thoughts about tragedy in Kipling’s life, from Auden, Nabokov and Beckett to the state of health of Samuel Johnson’s testicles. This book celebrates the diversity of the world of books and Raine is a supremely entertaining and thought-provoking guide.‘Raine pounces on writers lacking his own high degree of linguistic resolution and independence. The citizenly impulse behind these arresting critical interventions is usually commendable. One gets the impression of a man simmering in long silence, coming reluctantly to the boil because someone has to speak up’ Geoff Dyer, Guardian

A selection of literary essays written since 1972, this book addresses in detail the work of Dickens, Donne, T. S. Eliot, Coleridge, Dr Johnson, Betjeman, Elizabeth Bishop, Saul Bellow, James Joyce, and many others. Vigilant, sceptical, mistrustful of consensus, Craig Raine stands in the tradition of poet-critics whose task, as Eliot said, is ‘the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste’.

Craig Raine's dazzlingly original second novel, The Divine Comedy is a gripping meditation on sex and death and God and the myriad ways in which the human body plays dirty tricks on us. The Divine Comedy is a fugue and a black comedy. In delicious and bawdy detail, an unnamed narrator offers snapshots into the lives and loves of an astonishing cast of philanderers and fuckups while along the way, the evidence amasses for a comic, cosmic conspiracy.Craig Raine's second novel, The Divine Comedy, is a voyeuristic meditation on sex and insecurity, God and the nature of the human body - its capacity for pleasure and pain, its desires, disappointments, and its many mortifying betrayals.