Louis L. Martz - Böcker

This full and definitive treatment of the whole body of Milton's poetry, written by one of the country's most eminent Milton scholars, was originally published under the title Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry. With a new title and an introduction developing the theme of exile, it is now issued in paperback for the first time.“The most important single study of Milton that has appeared in years…. For a long time to come, it will be the book from which Milton’s oeuvre is reviewed and from which Milton criticism seeks renewal.” –Joseph Wittreich, Modern Language Quarterly“Martz’s pleasure in reading Milton is evident and he conveys that pleasure in his pages…. All of us will want to ponder and can expect to profit from a commentary on the text carried on with the educated understanding, tact, skill, and perceptiveness that are everywhere present in this book.” –B. Rajan, Modern Philology “A work that is both rich and rewarding…. The background that Martz brings to his subject illuminates Milton’s poetry in fresh and exciting ways.” –Michael Lieb, Cithara“The strength of Martz’s criticism arises from his style as well as his learning and good sense.  Observations are made in a manner which both clears the mind and arouses the imagination.  Commonplace facts, acknowledged but ignored, suddenly take on fresh significance, while the results of scholarly research are introduced with easy grace and relevance.  No one writing of Milton today has a sharper eye for the illuminating detail.” –Hugh Maccallum, University of Toronto Quarterly“Martz’s sensitive, percipient comments on the interplay of styles in Milton’s poems provide some overarching unity to these diverse essays.” –Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Journal of English and Germanic Philology“The best major study of Milton’s whole poetic career in almost half a century.” –Arnold Stein

Recent writings about Thomas More have questioned his integrity and motivation and have challenged the long-held view of him as a humane, wise, and heroic "man for all seasons." This new book responds to these revisionist studies by closely and persuasively analyzing More's writings as well as Holbein's portraits of More and his family. "Martz cuts down the revived charge of More as a bloodthirsty hunter of heretics, a furious, sexually repressed, and frustrated man. . . . This penetrating rebuttal of the revisionists deserves high commendation."—Choice "Martz draws a compelling picture of More's attempts during his lonely imprisonment to adjust to his human fear of death and to see his own plight in the perspective of the universal human condition. In these essays More's voice and personality speak to us from his own literate and humorous prose."—M. Edmund Hussey, Antioch Review "In his gracefully written Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man, Louis L. Martz provides a sharply different account of the 'dark side' of More. . . . [He] lays out the case for a more complex, ironic construction of More's texts."—Stanley Stewart, Studies in English Literature "This . . . book is a gemstone."—Terence R. Murphy, History: Reviews of New Books "Correcting the view of Thomas More as a cold-blooded prosecutor of heresy, Martz here considers the gentle, affectionate, yet upright man pictured in Holbein's family portraits and implicit in More's prose."—Judith Fair, Theological Studies

Of special significance are the "Uncollected and Unpublished Poems (1912-1944)," the third section of the book, written mainly in the 1930s, during H. D.'s supposed "fallow" period. As these pages reveal, she was in fact writing a great deal of important poetry at the time, although publishing only a small part of it. The later, wartime poems in this section form an essential prologue to her magnificent Trilogy (1944), the fourth and culminating part of this book. Born in Pennsylvania in 1886, Hilda Doolittle moved to London in 1911 in the footsteps of her friend and one-time fiancé Ezra Pound. Indeed it was Pound, acting as the London scout for Poetry magazine, who helped her begin her extraordinary career, penning the words "H. D., Imagiste" to a group of six poems and sending them on to editor Harriet Monroe in Chicago. The Collected Poems 1912-1944 traces the continual expansion of H. D.'s work from her early imagistic mode to the prophetic style of her "hidden" years in the 1930s, climaxing in the broader, mature accomplishment of Trilogy. The book is edited by Professor Louis L. Martz of Yale, who supplies valuable textual notes and an introductory essay that relates the significance of H. D.'s life to her equally remarkable literary achievement.