The Challenges of Orpheus: Lyric Poetry and Early Modern England - Hardcover

Dubrow, Heather

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801887046 ISBN 13: 9780801887048

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008

Synopsis

2008 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

As a literary mode "lyric" is difficult to define precisely. While the term has conventionally been applied to brief, songlike poems expressing the speaker's interior thoughts critics have questioned many of the assumptions underlying this definition, calling into doubt the very possibility of self-expression in language.

Whereas much recent scholarship on lyric has centered on the Romantic era, Heather Dubrow turns instead to the poetry of early modern England. The Challenges of Orpheus confronts widespread assumptions about lyric, exploring such topics as its relationship to its audiences, the impact of material conditions of production and other cultural pressures, lyric's negotiations of gender, and the interactions and tensions between lyric and narrative.

Offering fresh perspectives on major texts of the period―from Wyatt's "My lute awake" to Milton's Nativity Ode―as well as poems by lesser-known figures, Dubrow extends her critical conclusions to poetry in other historical periods and to the relationship between creative writers and critics, recommending new directions for the study of lyric and of genre.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice magazine

This book confronts widespread assumptions about lyric as a literary mode, exploring such topics as its relationship to its audiences, the impact of material conditions of production and other cultural pressures, lyric's negotiations of gender, and the interactions and tensions between lyric and narrative.

Offering fresh perspectives on major texts of the period―from Wyatt's "My lute awake" to Milton's Nativity Ode―as well as poems by lesser-known figures, Heather Dubrow extends her critical conclusions to poetry in other historical periods and to the relationship between creative writers and critics, recommending new directions for the study of lyric and genre. Broad in scope, The Challenges of Orpheus will interest students and scholars across a range of historical fields.

"Thorough, penetrating, and on the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship. Essential."―Choice

"A useful and detailed study. Dubrow is especially good at analysing the relationship between gender and genre."―Times Literary Supplement

"Dubrow accomplishes much in this pioneering study."―Studies in English Literature

"Her study exemplifies an ideal of informed and judicious close reading that one can only hope will prove as infectious as its author wishes it to be."―Modern Language Review

"Represents both a wide-ranging exploration of lyric poetry in the early modern period and a plea for scholars to emphasize multivalent ideas and inclusive taxonomies over hierarchical and sharply argumentative approaches."―Year's Work in English Studies

About the Author

Heather Dubrow is the John D. Boyd, S.J., Chair in the Poetic Imagination at Fordham University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0801887046
• ISBN 13: 9780801887048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304