The Cambridge Companion to English Poets [Hardcover]

This volume provides essays by twenty-nine leading scholars and critics on the best English poets from Chaucer to Larkin.This volume provides lively and authoritative introductions to twenty-nine of the most important British and Irish poets. Each essay offers a new assessment of a single poet's achievement and importance, with readings of the most important poems. The Companion is an ideal accompaniment to survey courses in English literature.This volume provides lively and authoritative introductions to twenty-nine of the most important British and Irish poets. Each essay offers a new assessment of a single poet's achievement and importance, with readings of the most important poems. The Companion is an ideal accompaniment to survey courses in English literature.This volume provides lively and authoritative introductions to twenty-nine of the most important British and Irish poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Philip Larkin. The list includes, among others, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Wordsworth, Browning, Yeats and T. S. Eliot, and represents the tradition of English poetry at its best. Each contributor offers a new assessment of a single poet's achievement and importance, with readings of the most important poems. The essays, written by leading experts, are personal responses, written in clear, vivid language, free of academic jargon, and aim to inform, arouse interest, and deepen understanding.Introduction Claude Rawson; 1. Geoffrey Chaucer J. A. Burrow; 2. Sir Thomas Wyatt Roland Greene; 3. Edmund Spenser Richard McCabe; 4. William Shakespeare David Bevington; 5. John Donne Achsah Guibbory; 6. Ben Jonson Colin Burrow; 7. George Herbert Helen Wilcox; 8. John Milton Martin Evans; 9. Andrew Marvell Nigel Smith; 10. John Dryden David Hopkins; 11. Jonathan Swift Claude Rawson; 12. Alexander Pope Paul Baines; 13. William Blake Morton D. Paley; 14. Robert Burns Karl Miller; 15. William Wordsworth Simon Jarvis; 16. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Seamus Perry; 17. George Gordon, Lls/