Bloomsbury Academic Collections: English Literary Criticism – serie

In the title essay, Professor Hardy argues for the special advantage of lyric over other other literary genres in conveying intense private feelings publicly. She then gives detailed consideraton to the lyric poetry of John Donne, Arthur Hugh Clough, and a group of poets central to the modernist canon: Hopkins, Yeats, Aden, Dylan Thomas, and Sylvia Plath. Those interested in W.H. Auden will find the book of particular value, since Auden occupies a central place in it. W.H. Auden has frequently been held up as the modern example par excellence of a 'public poet' whose works betray relatively little in the way of personal emotion. In the cahpters entitled 'The Reticence of W.H. Auden, Thirties to Sixties: A Face and a Map' barbara Hardy shows the inadequacy of that characterization and opens the way for a fresh appreciation of Auden's achievement as a poet. Readers interested in modern poetry genearlly and all readers acquainted with Barara Hardy's previous books will the book of importance.

‘There is a science of the aspects of things, as well as of their nature’ – if this dictum of Ruskin is central to his aims in Modern Painters it points also to the remarkable affinity of creative effort to record and to interpret the natural world that links him with Coleridge at the beginning and with Hopkins in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But the three writers stand in no simple relation of mere sequence and in this essay, which continues the exploration of the Romantic and Victorian imagination begun in her previous book, The Central Self, Dr Ball follows the complex interrelationships, clash and resolution of ideas by which a profound shift in nineteenth-century creative vision was effected.The notebooks and diaries of the three writers together with the literary work that grew out of or paralleled this material form the foundation for this illuminating essay, but Dr Ball’s enquiry is necessarily wide-ranging and branches into such wider questions as the whole critical theory of the pathetic fallacy and the influence on Coleridge, Ruskin and Hopkins of contemporary science and the visual arts.

Admirers of the work of Sylvia Plath will welcome this new paperback edition of a study, first published by The Athlone Press in 1976, which provides coherent and persuasive readings of her poetry. Drawing upon the traditional skills of the literary critic, David Holbrook also deploys the illumination of both psychoanalysis and phenomenology in a pioneering work of literary, individual and cultural interpretation.

In devoting a whole book to Measure for Measure Miss Lascelles has expressed her conviction that in no other way can the sharp divisions of opinion which characterise recent criticism of the play be resolved. She considers that to continue discussing the large issues involved in the limited space of a single article or chapter is to continue to fail to take full account of the difficulties the reader or playgoer finds perplexing. Her study falls into three main sections. She begins by discussing other versions of the story in European literature that may have been known to Shakespeare, and the way in which they may be used to throw light on his intentions. Next, she undertakes a long and reflective analysis of the play’s successive phases. Finally, at the conclusion of this essential investigation of the evidence, she shows how it supports the view that the complexity of Measure for Measure is the necessary condition of its greatness.

The years between the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and of John Stuart Mill’s essay On the Subjection of Women (1869) – a crucial phase in the emancipation movement – also saw the emergence of England’s greatest women writers, whose response to the flux of new ideas as revealed in many outstanding works of fiction Dr Mews here examines. The central chapters of the book take the form of a perceptive and humane analysis of the way in which the greater women novelists conceived the role of women, on the one hand as young girls, wives and mothers, on the other as individuals standing alone in spinsterhood, as teachers or artists. The writers examined in detail are Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot.Such a comprehensive study has not been attempted before. It throws light not only on the novel and the novelist in society but also on the transmutation of deeply felt experience into creative work.

It is a commonplace of Shakespeare criticism that he invented few of the plots of his plays and the sources he drew upon have been often and rewardingly studied. The emphasis of this book, however, is not on sources but on what may be called Shakespeare’s story-telling technique especially as seen in the articulation and pacing of events. Ranging widely through the canon, the book identifies characteristic problems and achievements which occur in the course of Shakespeare’s handling of his story material. Different aspects of Shakespeare’s treatment of, and attitude to, story are studied with reference groups of plays and, in two final chapters, essays on Hamlet and King Lear apply and extend the findings of the preceding discussions. The point of view adopted serves, above all, to bring out the vitality and resourcefulness of Shakespeare’s creative imagination, recognition of which must underpin all commentary but may easily be lost to sight in the increasing sophistication of criticism and scholarship.

The aim of this book is to let us see our language as a living and developing human activity in a period of history which offers special advantages for the purpose. Miss Tucker’s method is to analyse in the course of a connected narrative a large, wide-ranging body of words and phrases from two principal points of view. In Part One, using as the basis of evidence and discussion a few representative critical journals, including those with which Johnson, Goldsmith, Smollett, and Burke were prominently associated, she asks how the eighteenth century looked at its own language: what, for example, it esteemed elegant or vulgar, held correct or a solecism, found new or old-fashioned, impressive or funny. In Part Two the emphasis shifts from the eighteenth century’s views of itself to our views of the eighteenth century as we look back. Here the interest centres by contrast on our difficulties, our discoveries, and our conclusions and in the process our understanding of eighteenth century literature and manners is immeasurably sharpened.

The important influence of the Tudor ‘interlude’ on later Elizabethan drama is now widely recognized and the inherent theatrical values of these short plays of the era which preceded the opening of permanent theatres have become increasingly apparent through modern productions and study. Largely written for performance by travelling players in a variety of situations, their dramatic technique and methods of staging provide valuable clues for an understanding of Shakespearean theatre. The plays given here represent the interlude in its popular and courtly forms. All are newly edited from the earliest originals and the volume includes an introduction and full explanatory notes.

This collection of lectures, broadcasts, reviews, and articles (several of which have not previously been published) embraces many aspects of the English literary scene in the middle of the nineteenth century. Though various in origin the collection has this unity: it has been the constant concern of its authors for many years that the great and lasting contribution of the mid-Victorian period to our literature should be fully vindicated, and its appraisal based upon secure foundations of critical scholarship. The book has moreover an obvious connection with the volume on the mid-nineteenth century which the Tillotsons are preparing for the Oxford History of English Literature, though the items included here are not samples of that history but rather ‘milestones, or halting places, in the several ways that lead towards it’. There are important studies of Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Tennyson, Clough, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot. These, however, represent only one side of the book’s interest, for there are accounts of writers famous in their day, as Harriett Mozley and Charlotte M. Yonge, but since the cross-currents at work in the period, notably ‘Writers and Readers in 1851’, which vividly convey much of the quality of the momentous years in which so many masterpieces were produced. At several points indeed the volume demonstrates that the truth about the literature of the nineteenth century, in distinction (for the most part) to that of earlier centuries, may be recovered complete.

It is still true that most readers of eighteenth-century poetry approach it by way of nineteenth-century poetry; they know what Wordsworth said about Pope before they read Pope. This means that when they read Pope and other eighteenth-century poets, they apply the wrong criteria. An eighteenth-century poet did not have to create the taste by which he was enjoyed to the same extent as a nineteenth-century poet was conscious of having to. The kinds were ready waiting for him, and, if the rules of poetic diction for the kinds of which he elected to write were properly complied with, the products were recognisable: epic, tragedy in verse, Pindaric, elegy, heroic and familiar epistle, pastoral, georgic, occasional verse, translation and imitation. This book, a collection of essays by Dr Tillotson, examines these types of eighteenth-century poetry with particular focus on poetic diction, as well as discussing works such as Pope’s letters and Johnson’s dictionary.

Coriolanus has always attracted strong interest, whether seen as the last of Shakespeare’s tragedies, or as his most political play. In performance it has been constantly reinterpreted and has often strayed far from Shakespeare’s text.The Royal Shakespeare Company production, mounted by Terry Hands with Alan Howard in the title role, was acclaimed by audiences and critics in Stratford and London for its forcefulness and fidelity to Shakespeare’s play. David Daniell accompanied the Company on its subsequent tour in Europe where audiences were stimulated by this powerful production of a play that has a startling European history of heavy political adaptation.Living closely with the Company, David Daniell gained a remarkable standpoint for approaching the play and its performance as well as for drawing a fascinating account of a great theatre company on the move. His interpretation of the play and theatrical technique draws extensively on the experiences of the actors, other members of the company and its European hosts, audiences and critics.Coriolanus in Europe provides some penetrating insights into the problems and achievements of present-day theatre in general and of one outstanding Company in particular.

Professor Wright’s objective is to see Boccaccio in relation to the personality of the writers to whom he appealed and simultaneously to observe the changing taste of successive ages as it was revealed by their choice among Bocccaccio’s writings. Boccaccio was also a Eurpoean literary phenomenon, and this study attempts to consider his fortunes on the Continent. In considering Chaucer’s relation to Boccaccio, the author examines Chaucer’s poems afresh, studying the Italian originals closely in order to ascertain the precise nature of the English adaptation or transformation. Various minor figures of English literature are also dealt with at some length due to the importance of Boccaccio’s influence on their work.

A major interpretative account of Shakespeare's play, this is a close scrutiny which will engage readers directly with the text and perfomance of the work. The Renaissance code of honor is seen to be of central importance to the character of the hero, his actions, and to the play as a whole; and, viewed in this light, there is fresh revelation of the character of Hamlet himslef and of the dramatic world of which he is a part. Mr. Dodsworth challenges the conventional and traditional reading of Hamlet at many points. But he enforces no single overall meaning and readers are encouraged to remain sensiive to their own individual understanding and response.

The book fills a significant gap in modern critical studies. Hitherto, there has been no considered attempt to relate Existentialist thought to contemporary literature – and this is precisely what Dr Dobrez achieves, taking four leading writers and discussing their work in relation to Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Readers will find this account enlightening in its discussion of Existentialism itself and its application of Existentialist principles in modern literature. Thus this book will be of great value to students of both contemporary literature and modern philosophy.

Story-telling, since its earliest beginnings, has drawn its power not simply from the intrinsic fascination of a skilful narrative but from the fact that human beings are compelled to make ‘fictions’ if they are to explain and come to terms with the world they experience. This holds true, as Mr Wicker shows in the course of a profound and wide-ranging enquiry, for the complex and often sophisticated novels and anti-novels of our own day just as much as for such traditional forms as myth and fairy-tale. The world remains ‘story-shaped’.

Nature, not art, makes us all story-tellers. Daily and nightly we devise fictions and chronicles, calling some of them daydreams or dreams, some of them nightmares, some of them truths, records, reports and plans. The object of this book is to look at these natural narrative forms and themes, which have been neglected by critics but recognized by narrative artists, using literary criticism in order to argue the limits and limitations of literature. Although Hardy’s suggestions about narrative apply broadly to all artistic forms, in the second part of the book she approaches the subject through a detailed analysis of three authors, Dickens, Hardy and Joyce, all profound and far-reaching analysts of narrative structures and values.

Unstated meaning has always been a feature of poetry, but it is in our own century that it has established itself not only as the prevailing mode of expression but also as the central concern of analytic criticism. Although a variety of terms, such as Ambiguity, Irony and Gesture, have been employed to discuss this aspect of poetry and have gained popularity, Professor Rayan shows that ‘Suggestion’, occurring as far back as in Edgar Allan Poe’s writings and later in Symbolist theorizing, is a concept of much longer standing and of equal serviceability. In examining Suggestion, particularly as the only mode of presentation of emotion, he makes fruitful use of some central ideas from ninth-century Sanskrit aesthetics. The contrasted techniques of Suggestion and Statement are studied in relation to each other and with reference to many poetic examples, past and present.

Mr Holbrook here offers a new interpretation of Dylan Thomas which seeks, by uncovering the roots of his predicament as man and artist, to show what is of lasting value in his achievement. This undertaking involves the consideration of some profound questions of human personality and of human creativity and its denial.

This famous work was the result of the wartime collaboration of two Scottish scholars. Their tracing of the course of English poetry has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as a ‘volume of masterly compression’. They deliberately spend most time on the greatest poets, believing that, significant as traditions and influences are, the great poet himself affects the spirit of his age and moulds the tradition he has inherited. At the same time, enough attention is paid to minor poets to make the book historically complete, and to fill in the most important links in the chain of poetic development. Thus Gower is here, as well as Chaucer; Patmore, as well as Browning. Both in scope and in detail A Critical History of English Poetry is a distinguished and valuable work.

In this substantial essay on the novel (first published in 1964) Barbara Hardy distinguishes three integral aspects of the art of fiction – story, the working-out of a moral problem, and “truthfulness”, defined as “the lively representation of reality”. From this standpoint she discusses and elucidates some characteristic excellences and limitations of a number of major novels and novelists, including Defoe, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Meredith, James, Hardy, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence.

Professor Kane is widely regarded as the leading middle English textual and literary scholar of our time and this collection of his essays will be widely welcomed. They focus largely upon the texts of Chaucer and Langland and demonstrate in an exemplary way how critical issues can arise from meticulous textual study.

In this important contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies Dr Goldsmith presents a fully elaborated and documented interpretation of Beowulf based on the original theories which she has put forward in recent years and which have aroused considerable interest and controversy in scholarly circles. Her view of the poem as the product of a marriage of cultural traditions, a historical epic with allegorical significance, is developed in the context of a close analysis of the doctrinal and literary environment prevailing during the period A.D. 650-800, within which composition is placed. Dr Goldsmith seeks to show that the poem has a unified and coherent structure and in the process resolves many textual and interpretative problems of long standing. Beowulf is clearly seen as a serious work of art standing at the head of the vernacular tradition of allegorical poetry.

Through a comprehensive study of Dickens’ career this work examines the crucial role played by London in the character of the man and the development of his writing. It discusses the significance of Dickens’ early childhood experience in moving to London, and the special place the city came to hold in his creative imagination throughout his life. Then, blending biography and literary analysis with urban and social history, Dr Schwarzbach traces the fascinating and often dramatic relationship of the novels to the ever changing Victorian urban scene. The novels emerge not only as valuable historical documents, astonishing in their comprehensiveness and accuracy of detail, but as a unique contribution to the growth of modern urban culture.

The major edition of the three versions of Piers Plowman which the Athlone Press is in the process of publishing and of which Professor Kane is the general editor was not planned to include discussion of the authorship of the poem. The editors were agreed at the outset in believing that no real case for multiple authorship had been established in the course of the debate initiated by J. M. Manley in 1906, and they felt that a majority of Middle English scholars would support this view. They were satisfied that the hypothesis of single authorship was the best hypothesis to account for all aspects of the relation between the versions of the poem. However, the recent appearance of a book comparing the A and B versions in the belief that they were not written by the same man led Professor Kane to make a survey of the arguments advanced in support of multiple authorship and to examine again the evidence for single authorship. This re-assessment was originally undertaken without specific reference to the new edition of the three versions, but the unexpectedly positive character of Professor Kane’s findings has a bearing on the edition by materially reducing the hypothetical element in the editorial position. The results of the inquiry are therefore published as a supplementary volume to the text edition and in an identical format.

In his time T.S. Eliot established a new critical orthodoxy by which no major modern critic in England or America remained unaffected, but a decade has passed since his death and a generation or more since his extraordinary influence was at its height. It has therefore seemed worth attempting a fresh historical revaluation of Eliot’s critical achievement and the nine distinguished scholars whom Dr Newton-De Molina approached responded readily to his invitation that they undertake such a project. Their essays range widely over the various aspects of Eliot’s critical activity and place it in the context not only of his endeavours as poet and dramatist but also of his formal training as a philosopher and of his conversion to Christianity. They contrast the early and later work (not forgetting Eliot’s own retrospective comments on the former), consider its relation to the English critical and poetic tradition, and seek to show in what ways criticism may derive new impetus from the example both of Eliot’s strengths and of his limitations.

The study of Thackeray’s major fiction reconstructs the novelist’s working methods with the help of manuscript material, much of it previously unpublished. The book’s main argument is directed against the commonplace view that Thackeray was in some way a ‘careless’ artist. Much that appears casual or unpremeditated in his work can in fact be explained by the mode of composition which he developed in response both to the publishing conditions of his age and to his own artistic temperament. An appreciation of Thackeray’s writing habits helps clear up much of the critical confusion which has surrounded his reputation in the last hundred years. A particular feature of interest in the book is the use made of Thackeray’s preparatory working materials. These were widely dispersed after the writer’s death and have never been comprehensively examined.

This is a study of a curious and neglected facet of literature, in which the author traces the development and the uses of fable in Euopean literature, from Aesop and the Greeks to the revival of fable in contemporary fiction. This is the first serious study of fable in literature.

Scott was the first British novelist to discover in landscape a literary as well as a pictoral medium, an insight which he exploits to powerful effect in his Scottish novels. Mr Reed’s book breaks new ground by demonstrating the originality of Scott’s landscapes, in which romantic nature takes its place in a realistic context of people, history, architecture and traditions. The author shows how, as poet and novelist, Scott explores the notion of place to a depth where it operates not merely as dramatic background but as a force which shapes and directs the minds of its inhabitants. This study adds a new dimension to the understanding of Scott’s work.

The current Gothic revival in literature and film encourages us to look again to the earliest Gothic novels written beween 1790 and 1820, when Gothic was the most popular kind of fiction in England. Dr. Howells proposes a radical reassessment of these novels to emphasize their importance as experiments in imaginative writing. Her object, the study of feeling, is central to Gothic, for its spell consists in the feelings it arouses and exercises. As pseudo-historical fantasy, Gothic fiction embodies contemporary neuroses, especially sexual fears and repressions, which run right through it and are basic to its conventions. This study traces the effort to articulate these disconcerting emotions in symbol, incident, landscape and architecture. The chronological design suggests developments in Gothic, from the initial explorations of Mrs Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, through the Minerva Press novelists and Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey", to new directions taken by C.R. Maturin in "Melmoth the Wanderer" and later by Charlotte Bronte whose "Jane Eyre", arguably the finest of Gothic novels, places the earlier experiments in perspective.