The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry [Paperback]

This book analyzes major premises and practices of eighteenth-century English poets.This volume analyzes major premises, preoccupations, and practices of a wide range of English poets writing from 1700 to the 1790s, including Pope and Thomson, Anna Seward and Erasmus Darwin. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars avoid familiar categories and single-author approaches to consider such large poetic themes as nature, the city, political passions, the relation of death to desire and dreams, the rise of a national tradition, appeals to an imagined future, and the meanings of 'sensibility'. The essays are supported by a chronology and guides to further reading.This volume analyzes major premises, preoccupations, and practices of a wide range of English poets writing from 1700 to the 1790s, including Pope and Thomson, Anna Seward and Erasmus Darwin. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars avoid familiar categories and single-author approaches to consider such large poetic themes as nature, the city, political passions, the relation of death to desire and dreams, the rise of a national tradition, appeals to an imagined future, and the meanings of 'sensibility'. The essays are supported by a chronology and guides to further reading.This volume analyzes major premises, preoccupations, and practices of a wide range of English poets writing from 1700 to the 1790s, including Pope and Thomson, Anna Seward and Erasmus Darwin. Specially commissioned essays by leading scholars avoid familiar categories and single-author approaches to consider such large poetic themes as nature, the city, political passions, the relation of death to desire and dreams, the rise of a national tradition, appeals to an imagined future, and the meanings of sensibility. The essays are supported by a chronology and guides to further reading.List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Chronology; 1. Introduction: the future of eighteenth-century poetry John Sitter; 2. Couplets and lsÁ