Best of
Criticism

1968

The Life of Poetry


Muriel Rukeyser - 1968
    Multicultural and interdisciplinary, this collection of essays and speeches makes an irrefutable case for the centrality of poetry in American life.

The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics


Lewis Turco - 1968
    Many entries are followed by examples drawn from modern English poems that use the form and by references to well-known poems written in it. Each entry ends with complete cross-references so that readers can discover relationships and similarities among many of the forms. What makes The New Book of Forms more than just an encyclopedia of verse structure, though, is the opening section called "a handbook of poetics." This surveys the two modes of writing - prose and verse - and discusses various prosodic and metrical systems. Although the accent is on the forms of poetry, this book in fact contains all the information essential to a study of poetics from the Middle Ages to the present.

Tragedy and Philosophy


Walter Kaufmann - 1968
    Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives."[Kaufmann] has attempted a searching analysis of the essence of tragedy. He offers a new definition and, without raising his voice, his version of poetics as against that of Aristotle." -- The New York Times

The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy


Hugh Kenner - 1968
    In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one).This intertangling of art and science, of man and machine, of machine and art is at the heart of this book. He argues that the belief in art as a uniquely human expression is complicated and questioned by the prevalence of simulations—or "counterfeits"—in our culture. Kenner, with his characteristically accessible style and wit, brings together history, literature, science, and art to locate the personal in what is an increasingly counterfeit world.

Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare


Octavio Paz - 1968
    The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas.

The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968


Andrew Sarris - 1968
    Sarris's The American Cinema, the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited." Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject.

Collected Works: Volume One


Antonin Artaud - 1968
    The first volume of the "Collected Works" contains the important correspondence with Jacques Riviere, and Artaud's extraordinary explorations of consciousness and creativity in Umbilico Limbo and Nerve Scales, as well as essays on life and death, suicide, drugs, lunacy, religion and art, poems, manifestos, the terrifying short play The Spurt of Bloodletters and other material. This important volume is essential to an understanding of the art and theater of our time and will give endless pleasure and information to its readers. Translated and with an introduction by Victor Corti.Contents:Correspondence with Jacques Rivière --Umbilical limbo --Nerve scales --Art and death --Unpublished prose and poetry --Cup and ball --Seven letters --Appendix.

Blake and Tradition


Kathleen Raine - 1968
    Replacement for Volume One in the two-volume set, Blake and Tradition.

The Medieval Lyric


Peter Dronke - 1968
    After an introductory discussion of the performers and performance of lyrics in the middle ages, each chapter analyses one of the major lyrical genres and centres on close critical discussion of outstanding lyrics, with generous quotation of texts and translations. While the rise of religious lyric and the transformations of love-lyric receive the fullest treatment, there are also chapters on women's songs, on the 'alba', on dance-songs, and on `lyrics of realism'.

Commentary On the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats


A. Norman Jeffares - 1968
    

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning


Lionel Trilling - 1968
    

Secondary Worlds


W.H. Auden - 1968
    S. Eliot lectures delivered at Eliot College in the University of Kent at Canterbury, October, 1967.

Shakespeare's Wordplay


M.M. Mahood - 1968
    `Professor Mahood's book has established itself as a classic in the field, not so much because of the ingenuity with which she reads Shakespeare's quibbles, but because her elucidation of pun and wordplay is intelligently related both to textual readings and dramatic significance.' - Revue des Langues Vivantes

Companion to Chaucer Studies


Beryl Rowland - 1968
    Critical essays probe the works, literary style, and influence of the medieval English poet.

Shakespeare: Hamlet - Selection of Critical Essays (Casebooks Series)


John Davies Jump - 1968
    Title: Shakespeare Hamlet Binding: Paperback Author: John D Jump Publisher: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List


Weldon Thornton - 1968
    In brief, this book is a copiously annotated list of Joyce's allusions in such areas as literature, philosophy, theology, history, and the fine arts. So awesome an undertaking would not have been possible without the prior work of such persons as Stuart Gilbert, Joseph Prescott, William York Tindall, M.J.C. Hodgart, Mabel Worthington, and many others. But the present list is more than a compilation of previously discovered allusions, for it contains many allusions that have never been suggested before, as well as some that have only been partially or mistakenly identified in earlier publications.In preparing this work, the author has kept its usefulness to the reader foremost in mind. He often refreshed the reader's memory in concerning the context of an allusion, since its context, in one sense or another, is always the guide to its function in the novel. The entire list is fully cross-referenced and keyed by page and line to both the old and new Modern Library editions of Ulysses. In addition, the index is prepared in such a way that it indexes not only the List but also the novel itself.The purpose of allusion in a literary work is essentially the same as that of all other types of metaphor—the development and revelation of character, structure, and theme—and, when skillfully used, it does all of these simultaneously. Joyce's use of allusion is distinguished from that of other authors not by its purposes, but by its extent and thoroughness. Ulysses involves dozens of allusive contexts, all continually intersecting, modifying, and qualifying one another. Here again Joyce's uniqueness and complexity lie not in his themes or characters, nor in his basic methods of developing them, but in his accepting the challenge of an Olympian use of his chosen methods. The value of this volume to Joyce scholars and students is obvious; however, its usefulness to anyone who reads Ulysses is as great, if not greater. It can truly be the key to this difficult but rewarding novel.

Jean-Luc Godard


Richard Roud - 1968
    Richard Roud's seminal study of the director Jean-Luc Godard places the director in the context of modern European cinema, on which Godard's work has been hugely influential, and considers Godard's 'political' cinema, including the ferocious masterpiece 'Weekend'.  This new edition includes an introduction by Michael Temple.