The Columbia history of British poetry

1613 Pages·1994·3.55 MB·English

by  Carl Woodring

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
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Contents
Introduction vii
Carl Woodring and James Shapiro
Old English Poetry 1
Roberta Frank
Middle English Poetry 23
E. Ruth Harvey
Chaucer 55
George D. Economou
Poetry in Scots: Barbour to Burns 81
David Daiches
From Ballads to Betjeman 110
Carl Woodring
Printing and Distribution of Poetry 132
David McKitterick
Varieties of Sixteenth-Century Narrative Poetry 157
Elizabeth Story Donno
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Sixteenth Century Lyric Poetry 179
Richard McCoy
Spenser, Sidney, Jonson 203
Paul Alpers
Lyric Poetry from Donne to Philips 229
Richard Strier
Milton 254
Martin Elsky
Dryden and Pope 274
Richard Feingold
Poetry in the Eighteenth Century 301
Margaret Anne Doody
Blake 327
Morton D. Paley
Coleridge 341
Morton D. Paley
Poetry, 17851832 353
Jerome McGann
Byron, Shelley, Keats 381
Susan M. Levin and Robert Ready
Wordsworth and Tennyson 405
Jerome H. Buckley
The Victorian Era 425
David G. Riede
Victorian Religious Poetry 452
Cary H. Plotkin
Page vii
Pre-Raphaelite Poetry 478
Carole Silver
The 1890s 505
Karl Beckson
18981945: Hardy to Auden 532
George H. Gilpin
Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot 554
Calvin Bedient
Poetry in England, 19451990 577
Vincent Sherry
Poetry in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, 19201990 605
Edna Longley
Brief Biographies of the Poets 643
Jonathan Gross
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

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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