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The New Pelican Guide to English Literature #5
From Blake to Byron
This fifth volume covers the period from William Blake to Lord Byron. It begins with an account of the social and intellectual context of English literature during this, the Romantic period, followed by a survey of the literature itself. The rest of the book is made up of a series of essays dealing in detail with Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Crabbe, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Burns, Jane Austen, Scott, and the Essayists. Finally the volume contains an Appendix of biographies and bibliographies.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 10, 2020
Good overview for the basic facts. The criticism has not aged well. It dismisses both Shelleys way too easily. Best essay: the one on diaries.
January 7, 2023
Why do I always (nearly) get the impression that non-fiction articles about literature are more of an effort to show off the vast expanses of knowledge by the writer of the article, than to instruct or amuse the reader of that article?
That feeling overwhelmed me when I read this. First of all, I have a wide interest in English literature and don’t need much to get my adrenaline going when I browse in secondhand bookshops and find a book about this subject. And when it is about the Romantic Period, I don’t need much at all.
But why do they make it so hard for me to read this stuff? Endless sentences that drag on and on, with various sub subclauses. Difficult jargon when there is no need for it. Large amounts of random quotations and footnotes with no particular purpose. But most of all: what does the writer want me to learn? What message does the well-learned author wants to get across? I think, after all, that’s why he (hardly ever she) started to write it in the first place. To express a meaning about something so that the reader would be able to understand it and be all the wiser from it.
There is little or no effort, if any, to help the reader understand the central point of the article. Maybe it is because I’m not a native speaker of English or miss something altogether, but it seems more than that to me. I notice it far too often and, luckily, there are exceptions to the rule: in this book it is the article about Lord Byron by J.D. Jump. Easy to comprehend, well written without too much jargon and citations used to illustrate a particular point. I really enjoyed it and made me want to read more by Byron than I have done up to now. Shouldn’t that be the aim of every non-fiction writer?
Of course, there are many interesting points of view in the other articles but, and that is my central point, please help me a bit more to find them in the mass of words and sentences that you produce.
That feeling overwhelmed me when I read this. First of all, I have a wide interest in English literature and don’t need much to get my adrenaline going when I browse in secondhand bookshops and find a book about this subject. And when it is about the Romantic Period, I don’t need much at all.
But why do they make it so hard for me to read this stuff? Endless sentences that drag on and on, with various sub subclauses. Difficult jargon when there is no need for it. Large amounts of random quotations and footnotes with no particular purpose. But most of all: what does the writer want me to learn? What message does the well-learned author wants to get across? I think, after all, that’s why he (hardly ever she) started to write it in the first place. To express a meaning about something so that the reader would be able to understand it and be all the wiser from it.
There is little or no effort, if any, to help the reader understand the central point of the article. Maybe it is because I’m not a native speaker of English or miss something altogether, but it seems more than that to me. I notice it far too often and, luckily, there are exceptions to the rule: in this book it is the article about Lord Byron by J.D. Jump. Easy to comprehend, well written without too much jargon and citations used to illustrate a particular point. I really enjoyed it and made me want to read more by Byron than I have done up to now. Shouldn’t that be the aim of every non-fiction writer?
Of course, there are many interesting points of view in the other articles but, and that is my central point, please help me a bit more to find them in the mass of words and sentences that you produce.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews