Shelley’s editing process in the preface to Epipsychidion

Prefaces are often disregarded by readers who, more often than not, start without taking time to peruse them first. Sir Walter Scott knew this perfectly well, and he wrote about it, very wittily, in "A PostScript Which Should Have Been a Preface", the last chapter of his novel Waverley written in 1814: "most novel readers, as my own conscience reminds me, are apt to be guilty of the sin of omission respecting the same matter of prefaces". Scott refers to novel readers but poetry readers are also "guilty of the sin of omission", maybe even more so in so far as they may wish, understandably enough, to read only poetry and not a prose introduction. Many critics include prefaces in their analysis, but most of the time only as a means of interpreting the work they precede. Thus critics limit the role of prefaces simply to introductory materials and exclude any other potential interpretation. It is sometimes forgotten that the very presence or absence of a preface is already pregnant with meaning. [...]

Introducing "Critical Essays": Leigh Hunt and theatrical criticism in the early nineteenth century

The years 1801 to 1808 saw the emergence of Leigh Hunt as a public figure on the London literary scene, first with the publication of his collection of poetry, "Juvenilia", and then with his work as theater critic for "The News" between 1805 and 1807. [...]

Vernacular poetry and the spiritual Franciscans of the Languedoc: the poems of Raimon de Cornet

This chapter, in a book devoted to examining the importance of heresy in the construction of cultural identities in Europe, examines the evidence from recent historical studies of the Spiritual Franciscans for the further contextualisation, and better understanding, of the autobiographical allusions and ideological remarks of the 14th-c. troubadour Raimon de Cornet

Poetry of social conscience, poetry of transition: Ann Hawkshaw's 'Introductory Stanzas' and 'The Mother to her Starving Child'

Through close readings of Ann Hawkshaw's poetry in the context of industrial Manchester in the 1840s, this article highlights the interaction of form and content in poetry that makes use of the idea of the past to question or complicate the politics of the present.

Muriel Rukeyser: poetry and the body

The human body occupies a central place in Rukeyser’s poetry. Her characters’ physical experiences inspire their search for an artistic form and a holistic vision that reconciles the corporeal and conceptual aspects of their life. My thesis deals with Rukeyser’s reconciliation of disparate aspects of existence through the image of the human body and the practical experiences she underwent in her personal life and incorporated in her poetry. I discuss her poetry of the 1940s, where a tension is observed between the artist’s personal life and her art, which she attempts to resolve by adopting an artistic form that accommodates her quotidian experiences. I study, mainly through her poetry of the 1950s, Rukeyser’s poetic technique in the light of her organicist poetics and the combination of tendencies to coercion and suggestiveness distinguishing her style. I examine her portrayal of the suffering body in her poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. By means of their physical experiences, the ill, her despised and the imprisoned protagonists undergo a process of development whereby they perceive the different aspects of their identity and attempt to broaden perspectives on their situation by reconciling them. I argue that Rukeyser’s engagement with physical encounters and with the poem as an inclusive, organic body enables her to reconcile disparate elements in her poetry, such as her personal life and her art, her individual existence and the public world, as well as the distinct aspects of her characters’ identity. Her vatic outlook, which integrates distinct aspects of experience, is consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s idea of human perception as characterised by the two interdependent positions of immanence and transcendence. Rukeyser’s poetry depicts her physical engagement with quotidian events of her life as a factor of artistic inspiration. These situations constitute shared human experiences that enable her to imagine the links binding her to other people and the world at large. The poet’s personal experiences inspire her search for an artistic form that accommodates them. Her perception of the concrete aspect of her individual existence gains significance when it is linked to social and political issues. Both the private and public are thus seen as interconnected, and they affect the existence of each other while retaining their distinctness.

The romance of the Stanleys: regional and national imaginings in the Percy Folio

This article investigates a body of early Tudor poetry associated with the Stanley Earls of Derby, preserved in the Percy Folio (British Library, Additional MS 27879). It argues that the Lancashire and Cheshire authors of these poems modified strategies of national address, rooted in a historical and prophetic tradition we can trace back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, to construct a clear regional identity centred on the dynastic mythology of the Stanley family. The Galfridian Stanley-ite mythology of this period presents a significant counterpart to contemporary political historical and prophetic treatments of the Tudor accession. This provides an important new literary-historical context for our understanding of the Percy Folio romance "The Turke and Sir Gawain".

Rap Genius in the Classroom

Rap Genius began as a rap lyric website, but it has since moved far beyond just rap, with unique home pages for Rock, News, and Poetry. At its heart, the ‘Genius’ sites provide a social-collaborative annotation platform. Like Wikipedia, it’s a crowd-sourced database that allows any users to add content. Unlike Wikipedia, Genius invites users to annotate documents, to break down and close read novels, short stories, poems, and a wide variety of other texts.

The impossible infinite: Les Murray, poetry, and the sacred

In 1983, the provocative and idiosyncratic Australian poet Les Murray published a volume entitled The People's Otherworld. At the heart of that middle volume of Murray's work is a poem about grace entitled Equanimity. Here, McCredden examines how does the poetry of Murray seek to represent the sacred.

Narrativising the `woman monster`: heroines who transgress the feminine script

Contemporary fiction, through its delineation of “feminine” and “unfeminine” women, ultimately either perpetuates or challenges the patriarchal discourse of femininity. This paper is premised on the belief that “the feminine” falls into two specific categories, each as limiting in scope as the other: namely, conformity and transgression.

Contemporary poetry and the sacred: Vincent Buckley, Les Murray and Samuel Wagan Watson

VINCENT Buckley's Golden Builders and Other Poems (1976) is an important poetic experiment in its direct and exulted address to the city and to the sacred. The city is Melbourne in which Buckley lived, worked and wrote for forty years. In the original volume, the epigraph to the twenty-seven part sequence 'Golden Builders' is from William Blake's Jerusalem, a profound and idiosyncratic yoking together of the corporeal and the sacred

A model of superiors and subordinates' aggressive communication in the workplace

In the workplace, superiors and subordinates may engage in a spiral of aggressive communication and emotional reaction that can lead to negative attitudes and unproductive organisational outcomes and higher staff turnover. In the manuscript, we develop and propose a model of superiors' and subordinates' aggressive communication and emotional reactions. In our model we suggest that organisational context (culture) and individual personal characteristics (personality, trust, self-esteem) influence superiors' and subordinates' aggressive communication. We also suggest that individual emotional characteristics (positive/negative affect, emotional intelligence) influence the protagonists' emotional reactions. Finally, we propose that subordinates' emotional reactions and organisational culture influence their attitudes (organisational identity, perception of a masculine vs. feminine organisation) and their considered behaviours (performance, turnover). We conclude with a discussion of potential limitations, and implications for theory, research, and practice.

Poetry in motion : Ko Un and Korean democratisation

This essay focuses on the poet and intellectual Ko Un, a prominent nationalist and critic of successive authoritarian regimes in Korea. Ashis Nandy gleaned insights into colonial India by investigating the lives of individuals who were emblematic of British colonialism. For instance Nandy focused on Rudyard Kipling to explain how colonialism damaged both Indians and the English who were complicit to it. Similarly, I intend to use the life and literary output of Ko Un to glean insights into Korea’s fight for democracy in the context of the onset of modernisation. Through his political activism and writing Ko celebrated the lives of ordinary Koreans, including his one-time prison mate Kim Dae-jung and numerous political activists, workers, and farmers. He linked their struggle for democracy to a much longer quest to preserve what he considered to be the unique and invaluable aspects of the Korean national character.

In the dreaded park : Gwen Harwood and subpersonality theory

'In the Dreaded Park', first published in the Bulletin in 1961 under Gwen Harwood's first pseudonym, Walter Lehmann, is an example of Harwood listing one of her subpersonalities. It is the best illustration of a site of conflict between scholars of Gwen Harwood's poetry and she is the first person to use the word 'dreaded' in her poem.