Reading Poetry: An Introduction - Softcover

Furniss, Tom; Bath, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0582894204 ISBN 13: 9780582894204

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Reading Poetry offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to the art of reading poetry. Successive chapters introduce key skills and critical or theoretical issues, enabling users to read poetry with enjoyment, insight and an awareness of the implications of what they are doing.

This new edition includes a new chapter on ‘Post-colonial Poetry’, a substantial increase in the number of end-of-chapter interactive exercises, and a comprehensive Glossary of poetic terms. Not just an add-on, the Glossary works as a key resource for the structuring of particular topics in any individual teaching or learning programme. Many of the exercises and interactive discussions develop not only the skills of competent close reading but also the necessary confidence and experience in locating historical and other contextual information through library or internet searches. The aim is to enhance readers' literary and scholarly competence – and to make it fun!

 

About this title

From the Publisher:

Reading Poetry provides an introduction to the ideas and techniques that can help students produce informed and exciting readings of poetry. Many readers will have already acquired the basis for self-conscious and self-critical reading strategies through their everyday responses to popular culture. This innovative new textbook will help develop these strategies and interpretive skills by recognizing and explaining the open and multi- dimensional qualities of the poetic text. At the same time, Reading Poetry is theoretically informed and up-to-date, taking into account the wealth of theoretical speculation about poetry, and literature in general, the twentieth century has produced. A wide spectrum of examples has been included, ranging from fifteenth-century lyrics and ballads to contemporary poetry from all over the English-speaking world.

From the Back Cover:

“Reading Poetry stands out from other introductions to poetry in its brilliant combination of practical guidance and theoretical savvy. Students who use this book will be helped to enjoy and discuss poems, introduced to some of the major varieties of poetic criticism, and invited to reflect on what makes poetry important today.”

Professor Derek Attridge, University of York

Reading Poetry is a comprehensive, accessible and extremely effective guide to the arts of reading, analysing and enjoying poetry. From the opening chapter, which examines assumptions about what poetry might be, successive chapters map a path that takes the reader from the basics of simple appreciation to an understanding of the often complex theoretical and historical contexts that enrich any appreciation of poetry.

While emphasising the importance of close textual analysis – or reading in slow motion – the authors clearly demonstrate how an understanding of form, language and context can combine to produce sophisticated and original responses to all types of poetry.

The second edition of this best-selling book includes a number of developments that make it more user-friendly for the individual reader and more suitable as a stand-alone textbook for university courses in poetry. The poetic examples have been increased to 150, ranging from the 14th to the 21st century, and clear guidance is provided on further reading in footnotes and an expanded bibliography. This edition includes a new chapter on Post-Colonial Poetry, a substantial increase in the number of end-of-chapter exercises, and a comprehensive Glossary of Poetic Terms. The aim of the book is preserved from that of the first edition, namely to enhance readers’ literary and scholarly competence, and to restore enjoyment to the reading of poetry.

Tom Furniss is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the Universityof Strathclyde in Glasgow, where he has spent nearly twenty years teaching poetry, literary theory and Romanticism. Michael Bath taught English literature for more than 30 years at the University of Strathclyde, where his research interests centred on relations between literature and the visual arts, emblems and iconology. 

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0582894204
• ISBN 13: 9780582894204
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 648