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Authors: Carl Woodring,James Shapiro

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The Columbia History of British Poetry

BOOK: The Columbia History of British Poetry
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title
:
The Columbia History of British Poetry
author
:
Woodring, Carl
publisher
:
Columbia University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0231078382
print isbn13
:
9780231078382
ebook isbn13
:
9780585041551
language
:
English
subject
 
English poetry--History and criticism.
publication date
:
1994
lcc
:
PR502.C62 1994eb
ddc
:
821.009
subject
:
English poetry--History and criticism.
Page iii
The Columbia History of British Poetry
Carl Woodring
Editor
James Shapiro
AssociateEditor
Columbia University Press
New York
 
Page iv
Columbia University Press
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 1994 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Columbia history of British poetry / Carl Woodring, editor;
associate editor, James Shapiro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-231-07838-2
1. English poetryHistory and criticism. I. Woodring, Carl,
1919- . II. Shapiro, James S., 1955- .
PR502.C62   1993
821.009dc20                                                             93-18226
                                                                                               CIP
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 
Page v
Contents
Introduction
Carl Woodring and James Shapiro
vii
Old English Poetry
Roberta Frank
1
Middle English Poetry
E. Ruth Harvey
23
Chaucer
George D. Economou
55
Poetry in Scots: Barbour to Burns
David Daiches
81
From Ballads to Betjeman
Carl Woodring
110
Printing and Distribution of Poetry
David McKitterick
132
Varieties of Sixteenth-Century Narrative Poetry
Elizabeth Story Donno
157
 
Page vi
Sixteenth Century Lyric Poetry
Richard McCoy
179
Spenser, Sidney, Jonson
Paul Alpers
203
Lyric Poetry from Donne to Philips
Richard Strier
229
Milton
Martin Elsky
254
Dryden and Pope
Richard Feingold
274
Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
Margaret Anne Doody
301
Blake
Morton D. Paley
327
Coleridge
Morton D. Paley
341
Poetry, 17851832
Jerome McGann
353
Byron, Shelley, Keats
Susan M. Levin and Robert Ready
381
Wordsworth and Tennyson
Jerome H. Buckley
405
The Victorian Era
David G. Riede
425
Victorian Religious Poetry
Cary H. Plotkin
452
 
Page vii
Pre-Raphaelite Poetry
Carole Silver
478
The 1890s
Karl Beckson
505
18981945: Hardy to Auden
George H. Gilpin
532
Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot
Calvin Bedient
554
Poetry in England, 19451990
Vincent Sherry
577
Poetry in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, 19201990
Edna Longley
605
Brief Biographies of the Poets
Jonathan Gross
643
Editions
671
Notes on Contributors
678
Index
683
 
Page ix
Introduction
Literature in the shapeless galaxy of Indo-European languages has no brighter constellation than that of British poetry. Its stars have over time been made of differing and changing stufffireflies, bonfires, and blazing suns. In the many years that have passed since a similar history has been attempted, critical views about this poetic heritage have changed significantly. One signal of these changes is to be found in the present volume's title, which describes a history of British, rather than English, poetry. Increasingly, scholars have come to appreciate the plurality of national voices that constitutes the poetry of the British Isles. The Columbia History of British Poetry is a testament to the power of the poetry written in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, as well as to the recurrent impulse to retrace its history.
Within the collective history offered in the pages that follow are many overlapping, competing histories. The scholarly work of the last twenty years or so has exposed a disturbingly monolithic conception of the canon of English poets, replacing it with a less simple but far richer picture of the accomplishments of British poets over the course of twelve centuries. In the current volume, considerable effort has gone into making available voices long suppressedfrom anonymous balladeers to women poets whose contributions have for too long been overlookedwhile at the same time resituating some of the most celebrated poets within more sharply defined social and literary contexts, allowing us to measure their cultural and artistic contributions in a new light. One result is a livelier sense of the dialogue between poets within specific cultural moments as well as across the centuries, for the story
 
Page x
of British poetry is one of conversations between poets, both the living and the dead.
In rethinking the boundaries of British poetry, the authors of the twenty-six chapters that follow have used a wide range of critical approaches. Some, like Elizabeth S. Donno in "Varieties of Sixteenth-Century Narrative" and Cary H. Plotkin in "Victorian Religious Poetry" have approached their subject in terms of genre or kind. Others, like George D. Economou in "Chaucer," have focused on single poets. For Carole Silver, in her chapter, ''Pre-Raphaelite" poetry, a literary movement provides the organizing principle. For David Daiches, in his chapter, "Poetry in Scots," it is a national literature that proves central; for Edna Longley, it is that poets of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland celebrate powers inherited from Britons, rather than from Angles, Saxons, or Jutes. Many of the authors describe groupings of poets: Richard Feingold offers a venerable pairing in "Dryden and Pope," while Jerome H. Buckley, crossing the divide that usually isolates the Romantics from the Victorians, considers Wordsworth and Tennyson in tandem. And while some scholars have accepted more traditional chronological periods, they have chosen to do so in markedly untraditional ways; perhaps the most striking example of this is Margaret Anne Doody's revisionist "Poetry of the Eighteenth Century." The kind of critical dialogue to be found both within and between these chapters is made most explicit in Jerome McGann's chapter, "Poetry, 17851832," which consists of a conversation among three speakers. And the story of the material history of published poetrywonderfully illuminated by David McKitterick in his chapter, "Printing and Distribution of Poetry"is representative of the sustained interest throughout this volume in how poetry has circulated, and continues to circulate, among its readers. What Milton said of the fallen angels holds true of the contributors to this volume: "Thir Song was partial." Partial because any scholar's account of British poetry is necessarily biased, idiosyncratic, and characterized by theoretical independence; partial, too, in the sense that such narratives must be incomplete, fragmentary, and subject to change, even as conceptions of the traditions explored in this volume change in response to cultural and critical pressures.
One thing all these authors share is a deep sense of the social rootedness of poetry, of the reciprocal relationship between British poetry and British culture: they remind us that poetry is a social record of the kinds of events ordinarily excluded from the histories written of various
BOOK: The Columbia History of British Poetry
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