English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism

by M.H. Abrams (Editor)

This highly acclaimed volume contains thirty essays by such leading literary critics as A.O. Lovejoy, Lionel Trilling, C.S. Lewis, F.R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Jonathan Wordsworth, and Jack Stillinger. Covering the major poems by each of the important Romantic poets, the contributors present many significant perspectives in modern criticism--old and new, discursive and explicative, mimetic and rhetorical, literal and mythical, archetypal and phenomenological, pro and con.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Poetry, English Literature, Literature, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

Published September 11, 1975

About the author

Meyer Howard Abrams is an American literary critic, known for works on Romanticism, in particular his book The Mirror and the Lamp. In a powerful contrast, Abrams shows that until the Romantics, literature was usually understood as a mirror, reflecting the real world, in some kind of mimesis; but for the Romantics, writing was more like a lamp: the light of the writer's inner soul spilled out to illuminate the world. Under Abrams' editorship, the Norton Anthology of English Literature became the standard text for undergraduate survey courses across the U.S. and a major trendsetter in literary canon formation.

Abrams was born in a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. The son of a house painter and the first in his family to go to college, he entered Harvard University as an undergraduate in 1930. He went into English because, he says, "there weren't jobs in any other profession, so I thought I might as well enjoy starving, instead of starving while doing something I didn't enjoy." After earning his baccalaureate in 1934, Abrams won a Henry fellowship to the University of Cambridge, where his tutor was I.A. Richards. He returned to Harvard for graduate school in 1935 and received his Masters' degree in 1937 and his PhD in 1940. During World War II, he served at the Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory at Harvard. He describes his work as solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment by establishing military codes that are highly audible and inventing selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background. In 1945 Abrams became a professor at Cornell University. As of March 4th, 2008, he was Class of 1916 Professor of English Emeritus there.

Reviews

[caoimhe murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poets : Keats ‘ode to a nightingale’
Wallace Steven’s ‘13 ways at looking at a blackbird’
‘Frost at midnight
T.S Eliot ‘eat Coker’
‘Ode to autumn’

Key takeaway:
The structure and style of the lyric evolves genres, philosophy, theology & spiritual postures of poets and philosophers
Started with Coleridge ‘eolian harp’
The poems known as a conversation poem
Why? Intimate speaking/adaptable/feeling
Descriptive-meditative-descriptive
Lonely mind in a meditations
Living consciousness

Shelley “state called revere” “feel as if nature were dissolved int the surrounding universe or as if the surrounding universe absorbed into the being. They are conscious of no distinction”
Subjective and objective

Metaphysical and reminisce
“The poet is dead in me” Coleridge : dejection

[Garyu.Ide · Rating 2 out of 5]

I took this book to evaluate my writing skills for my AP Language class, and if I had to be honest, I don’t think it helped me so much. Of course, there are things I learnt from this book through the example and explanation of the techniques used in those examples. Although those parts of the book may be informational, I felt like it was not something that's worth reading 500 pages of; I felt like various passages repeated the same thing, but in different words.
The book was nothing special, matter of fact, a waste of time to read through the whole thing. I felt like I’ve learnt more in my pre-ap English class than and a simple three-page packet I get in my AP class.
I think one thing that made me feel this book was boring is that I’m not that great of a reader, and the fact that I read this book to learn instead of for entertainment. That may be the reason I couldn’t enjoy this book.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm concentrating on Keats, the last few essays. Glad I had it on hand. Nothing earthshattering but some interesting perspectives. But Keats is more of a sensualist, so it's the experience of the poem, not the elucidation.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poem is the essence of nature, the beauty of poems dates back all the way to the Roman era where artistic values and poetic values was the nature in every peoples lives. This book highlights all the values in poem also showing the pros and cons in each major poems the book presents to the reader. This book covers many poems from the earlier ages in life to the modern era where we as a reader see the change/similarity in poems throughout the years. Having read this book, I learned many techniques in writing and I also saw value in poems as I was intrigued to many of the earlier poems. This book will change your concepts of poems and it will have a impact to your life and writing.