Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century

Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century
Author :
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Total Pages : 275
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781611485202
ISBN-13 : 1611485207
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Synopsis Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century by : Min Wild

Front Flap: Poet, essayist, actor, hymn-writer, wit, magazine editor, transvestite stage performer: Christopher Smart, Georgian don-turned-writer, was all of these. He was, and remains, a mercurial individual, an idiosyncratic yet strangely familiar writer of spiritual heights and material depths. His paradoxical exuberance fascinates scholars of eighteenth-century culture, and this collection of essays, a snapshot of current scholarship from both new and established Smart scholars, offers, among others, literary, theological, dramatic and philosophical perspectives on his writing. Here are new ways of reading familiar Smart works — including the astonishing, devout poem of his incarceration, Jubilate Agno — and unfamiliar ones, such as his translations and writing for children. Unexpected readers of Smart, from Coleridge to a testy anonymous annotator, are examined, and Smart's sacred translations and profane stage presence each find a place. Tom Keymer's re-evaluating afterword finds the quality of “betweenness” in Smart's work: between eras, between genres, between forms, Smart's vitality demands reassessment for each new generation of readers. Contributors: Karina Williamson, Min Wild, Rosalind Powell, Fraser Easton, Clement Hawes, William E. Levine, Noel Chevalier, Lori A. Branch, Daniel J. Ennis, Chris Mounsey, Debbie Welham, Tom Keymer. Back Flap: The editors Min Wild's monograph Christopher Smartand Satire on Smart's Midwife, was published in 2008, and various articles and reviews of a Smartian bent have followed. Her interest in that eighteenth-century favorite, the literary mode of prosopopoeia, has led her to investigate the personification of words, texts and literary modes themselves. She lectures in eighteenth-century literature and theory at Plymouth University, UK, and reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. Noel Chevalier is Associate Professor of English at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. He has published articles on Jubilate Agno and on Smart’s challenge to “legitimate” playhouses in Mrs. Midnight’sOratory. Although his specialty lies in the eighteenth century, his teaching and research cover a diverse range of topics, from literary responses to the Bible, to the roots of globalization, to literary representations of science and scientists. He has helped create two interdisciplinary programs at Luther: one which addresses literature for students in the sciences, and one which explores the philosophical, political, economic, and cultural contexts of globalization. Jacket illustration: "Amaryllis sarniensis or Guernsey Amaryllis," from William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-GardenDisplayed, Vol. IX. No. 294. London, 1795.

Christopher Smart and Satire

Christopher Smart and Satire
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 240
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317166429
ISBN-13 : 1317166426
Rating : 4/5 (29 Downloads)

Synopsis Christopher Smart and Satire by : Min Wild

Christopher Smart and Satire explores the lively and idiosyncratic world of satire in the eighteenth-century periodical, focusing on the way that writers adopted personae to engage with debates taking place during the British Enlightenment. Taking Christopher Smart's audacious and hitherto underexplored Midwife, or Old Woman's Magazine (1750-1753) as her primary source, Min Wild provides a rich examination of the prizewinning Cambridge poet's adoption of the bizarre, sardonic 'Mary Midnight' as his alter-ego. Her analysis provides insights into the difficult position in which eighteenth-century writers were placed, as ideas regarding the nature and functions of authorship were gradually being transformed. At the same time, Wild also demonstrates that Smart's use of 'Mary Midnight' is part of a tradition of learned wit, having an established history and characterized by identifiable satirical and rhetorical techniques. Wild's engagement with her exuberant source materials establishes the skill and ingenuity of Smart's often undervalued, multilayered prose satire. As she explores Smart's use of a peculiarly female voice, Wild offers us a picture of an ingenious and ribald wit whose satirical overview of society explores, overturns, and anatomises questions of gender, politics, and scientific and literary endeavors.

The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart

The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart
Author :
Publisher : SIU Press
Total Pages : 230
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0809316099
ISBN-13 : 9780809316090
Rating : 4/5 (99 Downloads)

Synopsis The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart by : Christopher Smart

The only collection of all known letters of Christopher Smart provides the best psychological explanation to date of that complex and elusive eighteenth-century poet. The significant characteristics that distinguish Smart’s prose letters from his poetry, Betty Rizzo and Robert Mahony note, are that his letters were requests for assistance while his verses were bequests, gifts in which he set great store. Indeed, it was Smart’s lifelong conviction that he was a poet of major importance. As Smart biographer Karina Williamson notes, "The splendidly informative and vivaciously written accounts of the circumstances surrounding each letter, or group of letters, add up to what is in effect a miniature biography."

Futures of Enlightenment Poetry

Futures of Enlightenment Poetry
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 321
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780198857792
ISBN-13 : 0198857799
Rating : 4/5 (92 Downloads)

Synopsis Futures of Enlightenment Poetry by : Dustin D. Stewart

Explores the creative work of writers and theologians who used their poetic writings as a means to explore and envisage scenarios of embodiment and existence that extended to life after bodily death.

Variations on the Canon

Variations on the Canon
Author :
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Total Pages : 398
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1580462855
ISBN-13 : 9781580462853
Rating : 4/5 (55 Downloads)

Synopsis Variations on the Canon by : Charles Rosen

Masterful essays honoring the great pianist and critic Charles Rosen, on masterpieces from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin, Verdi, and Stockhausen. Charles Rosen, the pianist and man of letters, is perhaps the single most influential writer on music of the past half-century. While Rosen's vast range as a writer and performer is encyclopedic, it has focused particularly on theliving "canonical" repertory extending from Bach to Boulez. Inspired in its liveliness and variety of critical approaches by Charles Rosen's challenging work, Variations on the Canon offers original essays by some of the world's most eminent musical scholars. Contributors address such issues as style and compositional technique, genre, influence and modeling, and reception history; develop insights afforded by close examination of compositional sketches; and consider what language and metaphors might most meaningfully convey insights into music. However diverse the modes of inquiry, each essay sheds new light on the works of those composers posterity has deemed central to the modern Western musical tradition. Contributors: Pierre Boulez, Scott Burnham, Elliott Carter, Robert Curry, Walter Frisch, David Gable, Philip Gossett, Jeffrey Kallberg, Joseph Kerman, Richard Kramer, William Kinderman, Lewis Lockwood, Sir Charles Mackerras, Robert L. Marshall, Robert P. Morgan, Charles Rosen, Julian Rushton, David Schulenberg, László Somfai, Leo Treitler, James Webster, and Robert Winter. Robert Curry is principalof the Conservatorium High School and honorary senior lecturer in the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney; David Gable is Assistant Professor of Music at Clark-Atlanta University; Robert L. Marshall is Louis, Frances, and Jeffrey Sachar Professor Emeritus of Music at Brandeis University.

Cultivating Peace

Cultivating Peace
Author :
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Total Pages : 189
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781684480470
ISBN-13 : 1684480477
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Synopsis Cultivating Peace by : Melissa Schoenberger

Like Virgil, who depicted a farmer's scythe suddenly recast as a sword, the poets discussed here imagine states of peace and war to be fundamentally and materially linked. In distinct ways, they dismantle the dream of the golden age renewed, proposing instead that peace must be sustained by constant labor.

Fame and Fortune

Fame and Fortune
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 352
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781137580542
ISBN-13 : 1137580542
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis Fame and Fortune by : Clare Brant

This multi-disciplinary essay collection explores the controversial life and achievements of Sir John Hill (1714–1775), a prolific contributor to Georgian England’s literature, medicine and science. By the time he died, he had been knighted by the Swedish monarch and become a household name among scientists and writers throughout Britain and Europe. In 1750s London he was a celebrity, but he was also widely vilified. Hill, an important writer of urban space, also helped define London through his periodicals and fictions. As well as examining his significance and achievements, this book makes Hill a means of exploring the lively intellectual and public world of London in the 1750s where rivalries abounded, and where clubs, societies, coffee-houses, theatres and pleasure gardens shaped fame and fortunes. By investigating one individual’s intersections with his metropolis, Fame and Fortune restores Hill to view and contributes new understandings of the forms and functions of eighteenth-century intellectual worlds.