Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry - Hardcover

Veronica Forrest-Thomson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312617984 ISBN 13: 9780312617981

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Synopsis

First published posthumously in 1978 by Manchester University Press, this volume turned sharply against critics of the previous generation, notably William Empson, and against emergent strains of historicism. The book is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) defence of "all the rhythmic, phonetic, verbal, and logical devices which make poetry different from prose." According to the author, such devices are responsible for poetry's most significant effect-not pleasure or ornament or some kind of special expressivity, but the production of "alternative imaginary orders."

About this title

About the Author

Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) grew up in Glasgow, studied at the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, and later taught at the Universities of Leicester and Birmingham. She worked both as a poet and a critical theorist, and her poetry collections included Identi-kit (1967), the award-winning Language-Games (1971) and the posthumous On the Periphery (1976). Subsequent gatherings of her work include Collected Poems and Translations (1990), Selected Poems (1999), and from Shearsman Books, Collected Poems (2008).

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• ISBN 10: 0312617984
• ISBN 13: 9780312617981
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 168