Poetry of the romantic age is often uninviting to students, leaving them puzzled because they do not sense the connections between the poetry and themselves. Yet, much romantic poetry can be enjoyed and comprehended if approached in terms of some personal, reflective, and connective readings. Wordsworth and Whitman are often avoided because they…

In 1933 in Paris, a new literary movement was born: negritude, a black French-language movement. Its principal figures were Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime Cesaire, and Leon Damas. The chief features of the movement included: (1) awareness of African cultural history; (2) acceptance of and pride in the black racial identity; (3) a style which combined…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by John Unterecker, W. H. Auden, High Kenner, Giogio Melchiori, Frank Kermode, W. Y. Tindall, T. S. Eliot, R. P. Blackmur, Alex Zwerdling, Curtis Bradford, D. J. Gordon, Ian Fletcher, A. G. Stock, Allen Tate, and Richard…

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) has much to teach about arts education. However, the first question that many today might ask is, Should we listen to him at all? Wordsworth, some members of the postmodern academy have determined, was a bad man. He was unkind to his family and friends, they say, and they are uncomfortable with the politics he…

Argues that among the branches of historicism practiced by literary critics today, a branch of New Historicism that is broadly humanistic as opposed to narrowly political is the most illuminating. Describes the development and theoretical premises of this branch. Shows how it may be applied to the analysis of a literary work such as Keats's…

Argues that Wordsworth's emphasis on love of nature, faith in man, and political sympathy--three expressions of concern strongly echoed in contemporary life--make him a worth literary figure for young people to study. (RB)

Presents a method for interpreting "The Tyger" both literally and figuratively while leading into additional assignments on Blakean poetry. (RB)

Focuses on the way sexual excesses inscribed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Oriental discourses served to open up "queer" spaces in Romantic literature, while analyzing the degree to which the master narrative of British colonial domination was in part dependent on narratives of the sexual degeneracy of the Other. Focuses on…

One of the Afro-American writers who spoke out clearly during the postreconstruction period was Albery A. Whitman (1851-1902). A romantic poet, Whitman produced seven volumes of poetry. His profound belief in freedom and equality for his race is expressed forcefully in two long narrative poems, "Not a Man and Yet a Man" and "The…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by G. Wilson Knight, Bernard Blackstone, Mario Praz, Paul West, Guy Steffan, F. R. Leavis, W. W. Robson, Helen Gardner, George M. Ridenour, Edmund Wilson, Gilbert Highet, Bertrand Russell, and John Wain--all dealing with the…

Argues that Emily Dickinson's gender and genre moved her away from American Transcendentalism and toward pragmatism. Suggests that Dickinson's choice of poetry forced her to formulate a self that the American Transcendental prose writers could evade, and that her gender freed her from the restraints that the Romantic movement placed on women. (TB)

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Richard B. Sewall, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, George F. Whicher, Henry W. Wells, Donald E. Thackrey, Thomas H. Johnson, R. P. Blackmur, John Crowe Ransom, Austin Warren, James Reeves, Richard Wilbur, Louise…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Walter Jackson Bate, T. S. Eliot, Douglas Bush, Richard H. Fogle, Jack Stillinger, Harold Bloom, David Perkins, Earl Wasserman, and D. G. James--all dealing with the biography and literary work of John Keats. Designed for…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Sherman Paul, William Butler Yeats, Lewis Mumford, Max Lerner, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Leo Stoller, F. O. Matthiessen, William Drake, R. W. B. Lewis, Heinz Eulau, Henry W. Wells, Edwin S. Fussell, Laurence Stapleton, and…