Allusion to the Poets

by Christopher Ricks

Overview

Christopher Ricks is among the best known living critics. His third collection of essays, several newly written for this book, is strongly focused on the theme of how writers—especially but not exclusively poets—make use of other writers' work: from the subtle courtesies of different kinds of allusion to the extreme discourtesy of plagiarism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199269150
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/11/2004
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.52(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Professor Christopher Ricks is Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and co-director of the Editorial Institute. His books include Essays in Appreciation, Beckett's Dying Words, and The Force of Poetry.

Table of Contents

Prefatory NoteI.The Poet as HeirDryden and PopeBurnsWordsworthByronKeatsTennysonII.In the Company of AllusionPlagiarismThe Pursuit of MetaphorLoneliness and PoetryA. E. Housman and 'the colour of his hair'Yvor Winters: Allusion and Pseudo-ReferenceDavid Ferry and the Shades of the DeadAcknowledgementsIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Ricks examines the transfer of poetic power in his brilliant and witty study.... Ricks [is] a painstaking scholar and editor as well as the most stringent and imaginative of close readers.... No other critic in our age...has dared to isolate this wonderfully ramifying, richly human subject [allusion]...and given it such intensive treatment. With this book about poets and their gratitude, Ricks has earned ours."—The Guardian

"Chistopher Ricks's Allusion to the Poets made it clear again just what is so great about a great literary critic."—Adam Phillips, Books of the Year, Observer Review

"[These] energetic essays [are] witty and engaging meditations...on the relationships between poem and cultural heritage.... A dazzling performance, especially considering the rapidity and variety of [Ricks's] references.... Consistently intellectual, challenging, and stimulating."—Choice

"Allusion to the Poets sparkles with an enjoyment that answers repeatedly to the delighted complexity and play of alert poetic imagination: for a long time to come, all good critics will be Christopher Ricks's heirs."—Peter McDonald, Times Literary Supplement

"Ricks is a remarkable literary critic, and this book explores the relationship of poets to their predecessors, extending in a new way the vein he mined in T.S. Eliot and Prejudice.... A lovely book, to be enjoyed and learned from, and not only, or even especially, by academics."—Virginia Quarterly Review

"A monument to a whole waning era of professional reading. A monument, all right-but a functioning archive still, and a treasure trove.... A riveting achievement.... The lesson of Ricks's book couldn't be clearer. Debt is the mother of beauty. Which is a good enough motto for a continued return to his own stirring work."—Modern Language Quarterly

"[A] brilliant critic.... Ricks has valuable insights into the human psyche and the 'moral life.'"—P. N. Furbank, The Threepenny Review

From the Publisher