American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms.

Mutlu Konuk Blasing.

ISBN 10: 0300046073 / ISBN 13: 9780300046076

Published by Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1987

About this Item

Near Fine in Wraps: shows just a hint of rubbing to the extremities; very faint smudges to the outside edges; else flawless; the binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Free of any creases to the panels. Free of creases to the backstrip. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text. Free of ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, or labels. A handsome, nearly-new copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing a hint of wear and unobtrusive cosmetic flaws. Bright and clean. Corners sharp. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (9.25 x 6.15 x 0.75 inchs). 248 pages. Language: English. Weight: 14.9 ounces. First Edition Thus [1987]; Second Printing. University Press Paperback. Blasing endeavors to clear American poetry of its "centering figure," Ralph Waldo Emerson, instead identifying a quartet: Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson as that tradition's informing figures. She then associates each with a "master trope: "metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, respectively, that serves as a "strategy" for organizing our approach to the poems they offer. The eight 20th-century poets investigated here, ranging from Eliot to Ashbery, are placed in one or another of these overarching tropes. First Edition Thus [1987]; Second Printing.

Seller Inventory # 56203

Bibliographic Details

• Title: American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms.
• Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven, CT
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300046073
• ISBN 13: 9780300046076
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • Prose & Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

This important study of major nineteenth - and twentieth - century American poets redefines poetic tradition in America. Mutlu Konuk Blasing argues against the prevailing view that Emerson stands alone at the head of a single line of succession. She shows, rather, that four nineteenth-century poets----Poe, Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson---each established an American poetic tradition.

Reviews

Blasing wants to clear American poetry of its "centering figure," Ralph Waldo Emerson, instead identifying Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson as that tradition's four informing figures. She then associates each with a "master trope"metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, respectivelythat serves as a "strategy" for organizing poems. The eight 20th-century poets investigated here, ranging from Eliot to Ashbery, belong in one of these camps. Blasing's thesis, a hodge-podge of linguistics and phenomenology that is muddled from the introduction on, serves to drive away the diligent reader, while the omission of historical Puritanism and its offshoots (Edwards, Alcott, Thoreau) prevents her from really getting at the roots of the American sensibility. Not a book, but a series of disjointed essays. Marc Widershien, Special Collections, State Lib. of Massachusetts
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.