The English elegy : studies in the genre from Spenser to Yeats / Peter M. Sacks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sacks, Peter M.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Elegiac poetry, English--History and criticism.

Elegiac poetry, English.

Physical Description:

xv, 375 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

John Hopkins paperbacks edition, 1987.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Summary:

Peter Sacks explores the functions as well as the forms of convention in a book that is both an interpretive study of a genre and a series of close readings of individual poems. Moving from Spenser's "Astrophel" of 1595 to Yeats's "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" of 1918, Sacks examines such elegiac motifs and conventions as the use of pastoral contexts, the employment of repetition and refrains, sudden outbursts of vengeful anger, and assertions of deflected sexual power. These and other elements of the elegy, he argues, are more than mere features of a conventionalized aesthetic design, they emerge as elements in the performance of the task of mourning.

Contents:

I. Interpreting the Genre: The Elegy and the Work of Mourning 1

II. Spenser: The Shepheardes Calender and "Astrophel" 38

III. Where Words Prevail Not: Grief, Revenge, and Language in Kyd and Shakespeare 64

IV. Milton: "Lycidas" 90

V. Jonson, Dryden, and Gray 118

VI. Shelley: "Adonais" 138

VII. Tennyson: In Memoriam 166

VIII. Swinburne: "Ave Atque Vale" 204

IX. Hardy: "A Singer Asleep" and Poems of 1912-13 227

X. Yeats: "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" 260

Epilogue: The English Elegy after Yeats, a Note on the American Elegy 299.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references: (pages 329-365) and index.

ISBN:

0801834716

OCLC:

20289918