Paperback / softback | |
April 14, 2023 | |
9781949822304 | |
English | |
270 | |
10.00 Inches (US) | |
7.00 Inches (US) | |
$34.95 USD | |
v2.1 Reference | |
A Sourcebook for English Lyric Poetry
This Sourcebook is not a survey of English lyric poems but rather a florilegium. It singles out great poems of the last five centuries worthy of study in liberal education—in Great Books programs, Core curricula, and the Humanities generally. The poems were selected not as representative of the author's time or oeuvre, but rather as addressed to the reader and the reader's time by virtue of representing the nature of things. That is what makes a poem a great poem and worthy of study. The capacities, needs, and interests of current students of such great poetry were the principles of selection.
The great poems selected are arranged in five divisions according to their meters as a measure intrinsic them, rather than to epochal divisions of the history of literature. The paradigmatic example of this is the classical English sonnet. Many an English poet has submitted themselves to the self-discipline of this poetic form born in the classical period of English poetry in Tudor England. But what of such historical context? When Robert Frost chooses to write a sonnet in the 20th century, why associate it more with the free verse of e.e. cummings than of the quincentenary sonnet tradition his chosen form invokes for context?
Although the Sourcebook arranges five centuries of English lyric poems according to five metrical modes, there is also an index of first lines by poet provided as well. The fivefold metrical division does not presume to be either exhaustive or normative, but intends rather to interpret poetic practices. Likewise, as understanding great poetry's means deepens interpretation of its ends, the Sourcebook also begins with a propaedeutic "grammar" that introduces students to such devices of poetic art as meter, rhyme, and trope. These pedagogical aids are formed around examples of use, such as Shakespearian couplets to illustrate kinds of rhyme and examples of classical tropes from English prose as well as poetry.
The great poems selected are arranged in five divisions according to their meters as a measure intrinsic them, rather than to epochal divisions of the history of literature. The paradigmatic example of this is the classical English sonnet. Many an English poet has submitted themselves to the self-discipline of this poetic form born in the classical period of English poetry in Tudor England. But what of such historical context? When Robert Frost chooses to write a sonnet in the 20th century, why associate it more with the free verse of e.e. cummings than of the quincentenary sonnet tradition his chosen form invokes for context?
Although the Sourcebook arranges five centuries of English lyric poems according to five metrical modes, there is also an index of first lines by poet provided as well. The fivefold metrical division does not presume to be either exhaustive or normative, but intends rather to interpret poetic practices. Likewise, as understanding great poetry's means deepens interpretation of its ends, the Sourcebook also begins with a propaedeutic "grammar" that introduces students to such devices of poetic art as meter, rhyme, and trope. These pedagogical aids are formed around examples of use, such as Shakespearian couplets to illustrate kinds of rhyme and examples of classical tropes from English prose as well as poetry.
About the Author
John Tomarchio is on the teaching faculty at St. John's College, Annapolis, MD.
Paperback / softback | |
April 14, 2023 | |
9781949822304 | |
English | |
270 | |
10.00 Inches (US) | |
7.00 Inches (US) | |
$34.95 USD | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles by John Tomarchio
A Sourcebook for Classical Logic
John Tomarchio
Jan 2023
- The Catholic University of America Press
$34.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
A Sourcebook for Ancient Greek
John Tomarchio
Sep 2022
- The Catholic University of America Press
$34.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Other Titles in POETRY / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Separation Anxiety
Gavin Bradley
May 2022
- University of Alberta Press
$19.99 USD
- Paperback / softback
The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe
Mary Tighe, edited by Harriet Kramer Linkin
Dec 2021
- University Press of Kentucky
$30.00 USD
- Hardback
$70.00 USD
- Electronic book text
The Miltonic Moment
J. Martin Evans
Dec 2021
- University Press of Kentucky
$30.00 USD
- Hardback
$60.00 USD
- Electronic book text