Who killed American poetry? : from national obsession to elite possession / Karen L. Kilcup.
| Author/creator | Kilcup, Karen L. author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019. |
| Copyright Date | ©2019 |
| Description | xiv, 411 pages ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction. "The Expression and Stimulant of National Feeling": Poems, Critics, Contexts -- Chapter 1. "National Ideas Shall Take Birth": Beginnings -- Chapter 2. "Flattering the Prejudices of the Multitude": Poe, Longfellow, and the Problem of Popularity -- Chapter 3. The Weapons of Poetry: Negotiating the Civil War Era -- Chapter 4. "Perfect Simplicity and Self-Control": Larcom, Piatt, and the Critics -- Chapter 5. Scarlet Experiments: Dickinson's New English among the Critics -- Coda: Stopping by Woods. |
| Abstract | "Conceptually and methodologically unique among studies of 19th-century American poetry, Who Killed American Poetry? not only charts changing attitudes toward American poetry, but also applies these ideas to the work of representative individual poets. Closely analyzing hundreds of reviews and critical essays, Karen L. Kilcup tracks the century's developing aesthetic standards and highlights the different criteria reviewers used to assess poetry based on poets' class, gender, ethnicity, and location. She shows that, as early as the 1820s, critics began to marginalize some kinds of emotional American poetry, a shift many scholars have attributed primarily to the late-century emergence of affectively restrained modernist ideals. Mapping this literary critical history enables us to more readily apprehend poetry's status in American culture-both in the past and present-and encourages us to scrutinize the standards of academic criticism that underwrite contemporary aesthetics and continue to constrain poetry's appeal"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Kilcup, Karen L., Who killed American poetry? Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019. 9780472126019 |
| Genre/form | Criticism, interpretation, etc. |
| Genre/form | History. |
| LCCN | 2019032088 |
| ISBN | 9780472131556 hardcover |
| ISBN | 0472131559 hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic book |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | General Stacks | PS310 .M57 K55 2019 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |