The Defective Art of Poetry : Sappho to Yeats / Benjamin Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Benjamin, 1939- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lyric poetry--History and criticism.

Lyric poetry.

Poetics.

Physical Description:

199 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

Treating the work of Sappho, Goethe Blake, Hölderlin, Verlaine, George, Mörike, and Yeats in detail, Benjamin Bennett makes the provocative, argument that the nature of lyric poetry in the West has an element of defectiveness, This book sets but to prove that using the idea of perfection, which is applied routinely as a criterion of excellence in lyric poems, is fundamentally misguided. Once poetry in the Western tradition is established as fundamentally imperfect, Bennett reveals it to be as deeply exposed to problems in the social and political environment as any other form of literature. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Elemental Poetry

1 Sappho and the Wordsworth Problem 13

2 The Poem as Hieroglyph: Goethe's "Über alien Gipfeln" 31

Part II Meter and Meaning

3 The Voices of Experience in Blake 55

4 Meter and Metaphysics: Hölderlin's "Hyperions Schicksalslied" 83

Part III The Symbolist Move

5 A Song to Worry about: Verlaine's Chanson d'automne" 107

6 Stefan George and the Construction of a Poetic Idiom 127

Part IV The Political Dimension

7 Criticism as Wager: The Politics of the Mörike-Debate and Its Object 147

8 The Things on Yeats's Desk 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137381873

1137381876

OCLC:

864299332