A view of Herrick's poetic world and its values: with some reference to his fairy poetry
- Authors: Letcher, Valerie Helen
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Herrick, Robert, 1591-1674 , Fairy poetry, English , English poetry -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2265 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004773 , Herrick, Robert, 1591-1674 , Fairy poetry, English , English poetry -- History and criticism
- Description: From the preface: Herrick was a prolific poet, and a remarkably consistent one. Hesperides encompasses a lifelong collection of poems on themes as diverse as serious reflections on life's brevity and the playful examination of the minutely imagined world of the fairies, yet his vision of life remains coherent. My purpose in this study is to try to see ·Herrick's secular work in its unity and as a whole, without claiming to consider every aspect of his secular poetry. (I have not attempted, for example, to consider his classical sources.) As my interest lies mainly in his values and vision, my emphasis is on theme and tone, and the way they indicate his conception of life. For this reason, I only occasionally consider Herrick's poetic techniques, such as his versification and language, and there are no detailed analyses of individual poems which examine them from every angle. In addition, I am almost entirely concerned here with Hesperides , the secular poetry, and not with Herrick's religious verse, which is collected under the title of His Noble Numbers. (Although Herrick calls his book Hesperides: or The Works both Humane and Divine, the arrangement within is clearly a division into Hesperides, the secular poetry, and His Noble Numbers, the religious verse.)
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- Date Issued: 1986
The voice of protest in English poetry : with special reference to poets of the first three decades of the twentieth century
- Authors: Verschoor, Edith N E
- Date: 1973
- Subjects: Protest poetry, English -- History and criticism , English poetry -- History and criticism , English poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2277 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007270
- Description: Poetry, like every other form of art, reflects the values of the artist himself as well as the values of the age in which he lives. "I would say that the poet may write about anything provided that the thing matters to him to start with, for then it will bring with it into the poem the intellectual or moral significance which it has for him in life". (Louis MacNeice). This thesis sets out to uncover some of the things which, in the long pageant of English poetry, have "mattered" to poets to such an extent that they have felt compelled to voice their protest against any violation of such things perceived by them in life around them. The basic study has been a search for the different kinds of values and codes of conduct, in social, political and moral spheres, which have been unacceptable to some of the major poets in English, and to examine particularly the manner and the tone of voice in which each one has expressed his disapproval. "Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society." (T.L.Peacock). English poets who have protested against whatever they regarded as worthy of protest have continued up to the maturity of civil society to be rattles (some soft and mellow, others loud and harsh), to awaken both the intellect and the conscience of their readers.
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- Date Issued: 1973