Blank verse : a guide to its history and use / Robert B. Shaw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shaw, Robert B. (Robert Burns), 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blank verse, English--History and criticism.

Blank verse, English.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (319 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Blank Verse - Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter - is familiar to many as the form of Shakespeare's plays and Milton's Paradise Lost. Since its first use in English in the sixteenth century, it has provided poets with a powerful and versatile metrical line, enabling the creation of some of the most memorable poems of Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Frost, Stevens, Wilbur, Nemerov, Hecht, and a host of others. A protean meter, blank verse lends itself to lyric, dramatic, narrative, and meditative modes; to epigram as well as to epic. Blank Verse is the first book since 1895 to offer a detailed study of the meter's technical features and its history, as well as its many uses. Robert B. Shaw gives ample space and emphasis to the achievements of modern and postmodern poets working in the form, an area neglected until now by scholarship. With its compact but inclusive survey of more than four centuries of poetry, Blank Verse is filled with practical advice for poets of our own day who may wish to attempt the form or enhance their mastery of it. lively and accessible, inviting not only to apprentice poets but to all readers of poetry. Shaw's approach should reassure those who find prosody intimidating, while encouraging specialists to think more broadly about how traditional poetic forms can be taught, learned, practiced, and appreciated in the twenty-first century. Besides filling a conspicuous gap in literary history, Blank Verse points the way ahead for poets interested in exploring blank verse and its multitude of uses.

Contents:

Intro

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A NOTE ON REFERENCES AND SYMBOLS

1 / THE SOUNDS OF BLANK VERSE

2 / BEFORE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

3 / BLANK VERSE AND MODERNISM

4 / AFTER MODERNISM

5 / WRITING BLANK VERSE TODAY

NOTES

SOURCE LIST FOR VERSE REFERENCES

CREDITS

INDEX.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-289) and index.

ISBN:

0-8214-4235-X

OCLC:

320322836