The Modern Poet: Poetry, Academia, and Knowledge since the 1750s

by Robert Crawford

Overview

Addressed to all readers of poetry, this is a wide-ranging book about the poet's role throughout the last three centuries. It argues that a conception of the poets as both primitive and sophisticated emerged in the 1750s. Whether considering Ossian and the Romantics, Victorian scholar-gipsies, Modernist poetries of knowledge, or contemporary poetry in Britain, Ireland, and America, The Modern Poet shows how many successive generations of poets have needed to collaborate and to battle with academia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199269327
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews, and author of four volumes of poetry and four books of criticism. He is co-editor of The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Invention of the Modern Poet
2. Acts of Judgement: Making a National Body of Poetry
3. Scholar-Gipsies
4. Modernist Cybernetics and the Poetry of Knowledge
5. Men, Women, and American Classrooms
Coda: The Poet's Work
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Crawford has undertaken an exhilarating (and risky) experiment in combining the modes and idioms of conventional literary history and practical criticism with disciplinary reflection, personal testimony, and polemic thrust. The Modern Poet is a book to ponder but also to be welcomed, argued with, enjoyed, and—above all—read: we should all be delighted at the possibility and the prospect of renewed commerce between what David Hume called 'the learned and the conversible worlds.'"—Modern Language Quarterly

"This book opens intellectual borders.... Crawford comes out as a poet in the first person, breaking with 'impersonality', demanding a place in the story.... This 'I' makes the book beguiling and accountable."—The Independent

"This is a very good book. Crawford illuminates everything he touches on, and has produced a modern literary history that pays due attention to the institutions of literature, education, scholarship and publication.... Robert Crawford...is also one of the most interesting poets writing in Britain today."—English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

From the Publisher