Atkins, Elizabeth / 2008-07-29 00:00:00

EBOOK, THE POET'S POET ***


Juliet Sutherland, Phil McLaury, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

THE POET'S POET
Essays on the Character and Mission of the Poet As Interpreted in
English Verse of the Last One Hundred and Fifty Years
By
ELIZABETH ATKINS, PH.D.
Instructor in English, University of Minnesota


TO
HARTLEY AND NELLY ALEXANDER


PREFACE

Utterances of poets regarding their character and mission have perhaps
received less attention than they deserve. The tacit assumption of the
majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the
last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no
means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the
part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of
aesthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer
of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the
poet's self-exposition must have interest for all students of Platonic
philosophy, inasmuch as Plato's famous challenge was directed only
incidentally to critics of poetry; primarily it was to Poetry herself,
whom he urged to make just such lyrical defense as we are to consider.
Read more


Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20