Jesse Zuba
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164472
- eISBN:
- 9781400873791
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164472.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but ...
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“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it. Surveying American poetry over the past hundred years, this book explores the emergence of the poetic debut as a unique literary production with its own tradition, conventions, and dynamic role in the literary market. Through new readings of ranging from Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore to John Ashbery and Louise Glück, the book illuminates the importance of the first book in twentieth-century American literary culture, which involved complex struggles for legitimacy on the part of poets, critics, and publishers alike. The book investigates poets' diverse responses to the question of how to launch a career in an increasingly professionalized literary scene that threatened the authenticity of the poetic calling. It shows how modernist debuts evoke markedly idiosyncratic paths, while postwar first books evoke trajectories that balance professional imperatives with traditional literary ideals. Debut titles ranging from Simpson's The Arrivistes to Ken Chen's Juvenilia stress the strikingly pervasive theme of beginning, accommodating a new demand for career development even as it distances the poets from that demand. Combining literary analysis with cultural history, this book will interest scholars and students of twentieth-century literature as well as readers and writers of poetry.Less
“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it. Surveying American poetry over the past hundred years, this book explores the emergence of the poetic debut as a unique literary production with its own tradition, conventions, and dynamic role in the literary market. Through new readings of ranging from Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore to John Ashbery and Louise Glück, the book illuminates the importance of the first book in twentieth-century American literary culture, which involved complex struggles for legitimacy on the part of poets, critics, and publishers alike. The book investigates poets' diverse responses to the question of how to launch a career in an increasingly professionalized literary scene that threatened the authenticity of the poetic calling. It shows how modernist debuts evoke markedly idiosyncratic paths, while postwar first books evoke trajectories that balance professional imperatives with traditional literary ideals. Debut titles ranging from Simpson's The Arrivistes to Ken Chen's Juvenilia stress the strikingly pervasive theme of beginning, accommodating a new demand for career development even as it distances the poets from that demand. Combining literary analysis with cultural history, this book will interest scholars and students of twentieth-century literature as well as readers and writers of poetry.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the ...
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This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the formation of American literary culture in locales not usually considered crucial to literary history. The story of Shakespeare in the frontier West has been well documented, particularly in terms of performance history and male readers. Yet a substantial population of women readers of Shakespeare in “outpost” areas made up a significant portion of Shakespeare's audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These American women readers of Shakespeare, who pursued an agenda of self-education and instruction, suggest the need for further inquiry into the variety of readers in geographically distant locales and their often overlooked influence on a broad understanding of American literary culture and civic life.Less
This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the formation of American literary culture in locales not usually considered crucial to literary history. The story of Shakespeare in the frontier West has been well documented, particularly in terms of performance history and male readers. Yet a substantial population of women readers of Shakespeare in “outpost” areas made up a significant portion of Shakespeare's audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These American women readers of Shakespeare, who pursued an agenda of self-education and instruction, suggest the need for further inquiry into the variety of readers in geographically distant locales and their often overlooked influence on a broad understanding of American literary culture and civic life.
John Gatta
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190646547
- eISBN:
- 9780190646578
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190646547.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
What might it mean, existentially and spiritually, for humans to form an intimate relation with discrete sites or dwelling places on earth? In ancient Rome, the notion of a locale’s genius loci ...
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What might it mean, existentially and spiritually, for humans to form an intimate relation with discrete sites or dwelling places on earth? In ancient Rome, the notion of a locale’s genius loci signaled recognition of its enchanted, enspirited identity. But in a digitalized America of unprecedented mobility, can place still matter as seed ground for the soul? Such questions had been broached already by “ecocritics” concerned with how place-inflected experience figures in literature and by theologians concerned with “ecotheology” and “ecospirituality.” Yet this book offers a uniquely integrative perspective, informed by a theological phenomenology of place, that takes fuller account of the spiritualities associated with built environments than ecocriticism typically does. Spirits of Place blends theological and cultural analysis with personal reflection while focusing on the multilayered witness presented by American literary texts. Its interpretive readings range across texts by an array of both canonical and lesser-known writers. Along the way, it addresses themes such as the religious implications of localism versus globalism; the diverse spiritualities associated with long-term residency, resettlement, and pilgrimage; what seems to hallow some sites more than others; and how the creative spirit of Imagination figures in place-identified apprehensions of the numinous. This study grants that, whether in Christian or other religious terms, no discrete place matters absolutely. Yet it demonstrates, above all, how and why hallowed geography and the sacramentality of place have mattered throughout our cultural history. The book concludes with a case study of one collegiate experiment in place-making and contemplative learning.Less
What might it mean, existentially and spiritually, for humans to form an intimate relation with discrete sites or dwelling places on earth? In ancient Rome, the notion of a locale’s genius loci signaled recognition of its enchanted, enspirited identity. But in a digitalized America of unprecedented mobility, can place still matter as seed ground for the soul? Such questions had been broached already by “ecocritics” concerned with how place-inflected experience figures in literature and by theologians concerned with “ecotheology” and “ecospirituality.” Yet this book offers a uniquely integrative perspective, informed by a theological phenomenology of place, that takes fuller account of the spiritualities associated with built environments than ecocriticism typically does. Spirits of Place blends theological and cultural analysis with personal reflection while focusing on the multilayered witness presented by American literary texts. Its interpretive readings range across texts by an array of both canonical and lesser-known writers. Along the way, it addresses themes such as the religious implications of localism versus globalism; the diverse spiritualities associated with long-term residency, resettlement, and pilgrimage; what seems to hallow some sites more than others; and how the creative spirit of Imagination figures in place-identified apprehensions of the numinous. This study grants that, whether in Christian or other religious terms, no discrete place matters absolutely. Yet it demonstrates, above all, how and why hallowed geography and the sacramentality of place have mattered throughout our cultural history. The book concludes with a case study of one collegiate experiment in place-making and contemplative learning.
Agnès Nilüfer Kefeli
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452314
- eISBN:
- 9780801454776
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452314.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the ...
More
This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the formation of American literary culture in locales not usually considered crucial to literary history. The story of Shakespeare in the frontier West has been well documented, particularly in terms of performance history and male readers. Yet a substantial population of women readers of Shakespeare in “outpost” areas made up a significant portion of Shakespeare's audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These American women readers of Shakespeare, who pursued an agenda of self-education and instruction, suggest the need for further inquiry into the variety of readers in geographically distant locales and their often overlooked influence on a broad understanding of American literary culture and civic life.Less
This chapter concentrates on several representative rural and isolated communities and their Shakespeare reading groups, exploring how reading Shakespeare played a key part in civic life and in the formation of American literary culture in locales not usually considered crucial to literary history. The story of Shakespeare in the frontier West has been well documented, particularly in terms of performance history and male readers. Yet a substantial population of women readers of Shakespeare in “outpost” areas made up a significant portion of Shakespeare's audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These American women readers of Shakespeare, who pursued an agenda of self-education and instruction, suggest the need for further inquiry into the variety of readers in geographically distant locales and their often overlooked influence on a broad understanding of American literary culture and civic life.
