Best of
Literary-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 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.

Blake and Tradition


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

The Novel of the Future


Anaïs Nin - 1968
    Identifying those trends which she finds most destructive in modern fiction (reportage, the substitution of violence for emotion, and the growing cults of ugliness, toughness, and caricature), Nin offers, instead, an argument for and synthesis of the poetic novel.Drawing upon such related arts as filmmaking, painting, and dance, Nin discusses her own efforts in this genre as well as the development of such writers as D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Marguerite Young, and Djuna Barnes. In chapters devoted to the pursuit of the hidden self, the genesis of fiction, and the relationship between the diary and fiction, she addresses the materials, techniques, and nourishment of the arts, and the functions of art itself.

Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926-1962


William Faulkner - 1968
    

Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1


Samuel Johnson - 1968
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Commentary On the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats


A. Norman Jeffares - 1968
    

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning


Lionel Trilling - 1968
    

Companion to Chaucer Studies


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

Keys To Lolita


Carl R. Proffer - 1968
    

Babel to Byzantium: Poets and Poetry Now


James Dickey - 1968
    His idea of the "suspect" in poetry is roughly equivalent to the notion that modern poetry has become "a complicated but learnable (for many have learned) game." "Most of our contemporary poets are writing into a Climate of poetic officialdom. . . based largely on the principles which the New Criticism has espoused. . . . We have lost all sense of personal intimacy between the poet and his reader." This sort of winsome polemic had some relevancy in the Fifties. Poetry today knows no such guidelines or iron-clad rules. Thus, both Dickey's theorizing or individual appraisals of a variety of different poets in this collection of reviews and essays covering the last ten years has about it the peculiar air of combat when the battle appears to be going on elsewhere. Dickey dislikes Ginsberg and Ashbery, as well as Robert Graves that is to say, he condemns both the confessional and experimental, along with the elegant, or what he would call the "autonomous," poem. His admirers praise him for earnestness, lucidity, and critical integrity, and it is true he does have these values. But he is also parochial, unsophisticated, and extremely limited in his literary responses, erudition, and prose style. The best pieces here are the tributes to Roethke, Aiken, Marianne Moore, and the solid analyses of five classics.(Kirkus, 1968)

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.

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


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

The Magic Flute Unveiled: Esoteric Symbolism in Mozart's Masonic Opera


Jacques Chailley - 1968
    The author relates each of these elements to the esoteric tradition from which they emanate and to Mozart's own involvement with the Masonic brotherhood.