Edited by Carl Woodring (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) and James Shapiro A sweeping compendium of British verse from Old and Middle English to the present, including the best work of poets from every corner of the British Isles, The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive single volume available. Carl Woodring and James Shapiro, … Continued
By Jonathan Culler (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) What sort of thing is a lyric poem? An intense expression of subjective experience? The fictive speech of a specifiable persona? Theory of the Lyric reveals the limitations of these two conceptions of the lyric—the older Romantic model and the modern conception that has come to dominate the study of poetry—both … Continued
By George Kane (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) Professor Kane is widely regarded as the leading middle English textual and literary scholar of our time and this collection of his essays will be widely welcomed. They focus largely upon the texts of Chaucer and Langland and demonstrate in an exemplary way how critical issues can arise from … Continued
By Robert Bernard Martin (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) Probably no English poet of the 19th century is today so widely read or greatly loved as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yet in his lifetime he was almost entirely unpublished, and only a handful of his close friends knew that he wrote poetry at all.
By J. P. Fokkelman (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel is the vast undertaking to interpret all the material in Samuel. Everything that the text has to offer can only be understood and appreciated to the full, and its interpretation can only lay claim to full validity by means of … Continued
By Elizabeth K. Helsinger (NHC Fellow, 1997–98; 2007–08) In arguing for the crucial importance of song for poets in the long nineteenth century, Elizabeth Helsinger focuses on both the effects of song on lyric forms and the mythopoetics through which poets explored the affinities of poetry with song. Looking in particular at individual poets and … Continued
Edited by Carl Woodring (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) and James Shapiro The Columbia Anthology pays tribute to the renowned works that any include–Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Eliot, Auden. But the book also resurrects the voices of excellent poets, particularly women–such as Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Ingram, and Christina Rossetti. Unencumbered by extensive notes that divert … Continued
By John N. Wall (NHC Fellow, 1980–81; 2013–14)
By C. David Benson (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) David Benson's lively new interpretation of Chaucer's great story collection attributes the variety and contrast of the tales to the unique literary style of each narrative. In contrast to the popular "dramatic approach," which assumes that the diversity of the tales comes from the supposed psyches of the … Continued
By Rita Dove (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) With this her fourth book of poems – her first since winning the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry – Rita Dove expands her role as a leading voice in contemporary American letters. The title of the collection serves as an umbrella for the intimate concerns expressed in the forty-eight … Continued