A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry [Hardcover]

This broad-ranging Companion offers readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry in all its rich variety.

• Provides an up-to-date and wide-ranging guide to eighteenth-century poetry
• Reflects the dramatic transformation which has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades
• Opens with a section on contexts, discussing poetry’s relationships with patriotism, politics, science, and the visual arts, for example
• Discusses poetry by male and female poets from all walks of life
• Includes numerous close readings of individual poems, ranging from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock to Mary Collier’s The Woman’s Labour
• Includes more provocative contributions on subjects such as rural poetry and the self-taught tradition, British poetry 'beyond the borders', the constructions of femininity, women as writers and women as readers.
• Designed to be used alongside David Fairer and Christine Gerrard’s Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 3rd edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1
Christine Gerrard

PART I Contexts and Perspectives 5

1 Poetry, Politics, and the Rise of Party 7
Christine Gerrard

2 Poetry, Politics, and Empire 23
Suvir Kaul

3 Poetry and Science 38
Clark Lawlor

4 Poetry and Religion 53
Emma Mason