Sterling Brown and the "Vestiges" of the Blues: The Role of Race in English Verse Structure

MELUS ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomasek Manson
Author(s):  
Patrick Collier

This chapter meditates upon the role of the poetry anthology and its claims on literary value at the turn of the twentieth century. By sorting the output of poets, the anthology might seem to stabilize literary value; but like all print artefacts in the period, the anthology was overproduced, and therefore could also be seen as positing multiple, competing canons. The anthology form was in flux in these years as well, with such familiar conventions as tables of contents and the grouping of poems by poet not having emerged as norms. In this context, the textual materiality of anthologies became a complex system for intervening in debates about value. The chapter revisits the most popular anthologies of the era—Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and the Oxford Book of English Verse—to sketch out the emerging codes of the anthology form. Poet and publisher Harold Monro, the chapter argues, pursued a more egalitarian textual politics than these popular anthologies, particularly his underappreciated 1929 anthology, Twentieth Century Poetry. The chapter reads the content and the metatexts of Twentieth Century Poetry as asserting a catholic vision of modern poetry as vital to everyday life.


2013 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 178-198
Author(s):  
J. Alison Rosenblitt

This paper considers a Sapphic poem written by E. E. Cummings: ‘the phonograph may(if it likes)be prophe’, which takes aim at Ezra Pound's relationship to the classical tradition and in particular at Pound's classicising use of quantitative metre. Cummings’ humourous but biting poem comments on Pound's literary ideas in the light of his fascist politics. Cummings’ poem constructs a layered discussion about ownership of the Classical tradition and about the privileging of the Classical aesthetic versus the English ear in English-language poetry. Thus Cummings offers both a critique of Pound and, implicitly, a literary argument concerning the role of the Classics in English verse.


Author(s):  
JANE STABLER

This chapter focuses on the force of Byron as a ‘talker’ between poetry and conversation in English verse. It discusses the conversational mode of his poetry, which is noted to be often taken for granted. The chapter also explores Byron's mobile attention to the role of the reader and with the degree of dissonance or friction that the reader helps engender. It shows that the boundaries of both speech and poetry are both enforced and eroded by Byron.


1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-156
Author(s):  
Clive Scott

The richness and complexity of rhyme has to a great extent been ignored. This article first examines the structural role of rhymes within metrics, illuminating its contrasted role in French and English verse. Linguistic differences and their consequences for the exploitation of various rhyme schemes in French and English are also examined—for example through a discussion of the role of rhyme in French classical drama as compared to English Restoration drama. The semantic and pragmatic consequences of rhyme are also addressed, with special emphasis on the comparative anatomy of rhyme words (morphemes, suffixes, endings) and the changed significance of rhyme with the advent of free verse.


Author(s):  
Neil Rhodes

The conclusion uses the contrast between the English verse anthology Belvedere, published by John Bodenham in 1600, and Erasmus’ proverb collection of 1499 to suggest how literary culture in England evolves in the course of the sixteenth century: the role of literary arbiter is transferred from an international scholar of formidable learning to an upwardly mobile grocer with a taste for poetry, and the resources of literature have been transferred from Latin, the common language of Europe, to common English. This concluding chapter reprises the themes and argument of the book and ends with the observation that by 1600 the commonalty was not just the labouring class, but also constituted a readership and an audience.


Author(s):  
Wendy Scase

London, British Library, MS Additional 37787, a volume of prayers and other devotions and related material, was part-edited by Nita S. Baugh as A Worcestershire Miscellany Compiled by John Northwood c. 1400 (1956). Baugh’s title was based on ownership inscriptions of John Northwood, monk at Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire, and members of the Throckmorton family also of Worcestershire. These associations have made the manuscript an important witness in narratives about Cistercian participation in the production and circulation of Middle English verse manuscripts in the West Midlands and the role of monasteries in fostering vernacular writing and book production, including the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts. This chapter proposes that this view is called into question by careful codicological examination of the volume. Through challenging these propositions it suggests alternative ways to explore and explain the production of books containing vernacular prayers and devotions in late medieval England.


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