Poetry and uselessness : from Coleridge to Ashbery /
"W.H. Auden famously claimed "poetry makes nothing happen." That may or may not be the case, but the idea that poetry makes nothing happen has, itself, been extremely influential, and has made a great deal happen in the world. This book examines several of the main currents in literar...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Routledge,
2020
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| Series: | Among the Victorians and modernists ;
20 |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "W.H. Auden famously claimed "poetry makes nothing happen." That may or may not be the case, but the idea that poetry makes nothing happen has, itself, been extremely influential, and has made a great deal happen in the world. This book examines several of the main currents in literary history as that influential idea flows through poetry and into the wider world. Since the invention of the idea, it has influenced theories of education; helped legitimize the entry of the middle class into political life; spawned ideas of symbolism that are still with us; formed a bulwark protecting literary culture from the commercial world; helped create the artistic subculture of bohemia; informed queer discourse and identity; and helped create both contemporary literary taste and the institutions that support it. Through chapters on figures from Coleridge and Tennyson to Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery, we see how maintaining that poetry has no use in the world has been and remains a very powerful-and useful-idea"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (x, 254 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 0429263171 0429553757 0429558228 0429562691 9780429263170 9780429553752 9780429558221 9780429562693 |