Richard Terry

Quickly equips readers with the strategies to understand and deepen their engagement with individual poems Praise for the first edition: 'Wide-ranging, provocative, and thorough, Strachan and Terry provide the student with all the tools necessary for the study of poetry. I can think of no other volume that offers the reader so much in so few pages. This is the text of choice for all students and teachers of the subject.' Duncan Wu, University of Glasgow Based on their extensive teaching experience, the authors provide a lively route map through the main aspects of poetry such as sound effects, rhythm and metre, the typographic display of poems on the page and the language of poetry using practical examples throughout. o Packed full of examples, from the work of Shakespeare to Edwin Morgan and from Sylvia Plath to John Agard o Detailed index of poets, works, terms, forms & concepts o Full glossary of poetic terms, from /acatalectic/ to /wrenched accent/, with cross-references and page references of examples New for this edition: o End-of-chapter exercises and follow-up research tasks o New readings of modern women's poetry o Section on How to Write Poetry with exercises o Suggestions for further reading -- both books and websites

Quickly equips readers with the strategies to understand and deepen their engagement with individual poems Praise for the first edition: 'Wide-ranging, provocative, and thorough, Strachan and Terry provide the student with all the tools necessary for the study of poetry. I can think of no other volume that offers the reader so much in so few pages. This is the text of choice for all students and teachers of the subject.' Duncan Wu, University of Glasgow Based on their extensive teaching experience, the authors provide a lively route map through the main aspects of poetry such as sound effects, rhythm and metre, the typographic display of poems on the page and the language of poetry using practical examples throughout. o Packed full of examples, from the work of Shakespeare to Edwin Morgan and from Sylvia Plath to John Agard o Detailed index of poets, works, terms, forms & concepts o Full glossary of poetic terms, from /acatalectic/ to /wrenched accent/, with cross-references and page references of examples New for this edition: o End-of-chapter exercises and follow-up research tasks o New readings of modern women's poetry o Section on How to Write Poetry with exercises o Suggestions for further reading -- both books and websites

Mock-heroic is the exemplary genre of the English Augustan era: it is one of the few genres that the Augustans invented themselves, and it stands in a symbolic relation to a culture still reverential of the grandeurs of the classical past and uneasy about its ability to emulate them. Mock-Heroic from Butler to Cowper shows the protean nature of mock-epic at this time. It recounts the rise of mock-heroic, discusses the properties of the form, and explores its relation both to classical epic and to contemporary genres such as the poetic travesty and the novel. It also tracks the relation of mock-heroic to the concept to the sublime, especially to the low sublime unwittingly perfected by Richard Blackmore. Terry goes beyond previous commentators in arguing that mock-heroic was not merely a conventional genre, but also provided a supple discourse through which writers could represent a range of personal and social issues. He identifies mock-heroic properties in the Mandevillian discourse of economics and in the rhetoric of male gallantry towards women, in which women were simultaneously elevated and put down. He also sees mock-heroic as informing the idea of divine grace in the poetry and letters of William Cowper. Mixing a historical approach with incisive close readings, Terry provides a powerful re-evaluation of the form.

Concentrating on the period 1660-1781, this book explores how the English literary past was made. It charts how antiquarians unearthed the raw materials of the English (or more widely) British tradition; how scholars drafted narratives about the development of native literature; and how critics assigned the leading writers to canons of literary greatness. Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past also analyzes the various kinds of occasion on which the contents of the literary past are rehearsed. Discussed, for example, is the rise of Poets' Corner as a national shrine for the consecration of literary worthies; and the author also considers a wide range of poetic genres that lent themselves to recitals of the literary past: the funeral elegy, the progress-of-poesy poem and the session of the poets poem. The book concludes that the opening up and ordering of the English literary past occurs earlier than is generally supposed; and the same also applies to the process by which women writers achieve their own distinctive form of canonical recognition.

Poetry: An Introduction is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the structural and methodological principles underpinning poetry and its study. It aims to equip the student, researcher, and general reader with a body of technical information that will sharpen and deepen their engagement with individual poems. Strachan and Terry provide a lively map through what might on first experience seem the most daunting aspects of poetry: poetic sound effects, rhythm and meter, the typographic display of poems on the page, the language of poetry, and the use made by poets of techniques of comparison and association. The book's discussion of poetic terminology is allied throughout to illustrative readings that show the usefulness of the terminology in approaching particular poems; its emphasis is always a practical one, demonstrating how poems actually work. Beginning with an historical overview of the development of English poetry from its earliest origins and finishing with an authoritative dictionary of poetical terms, Poetry: An Introduction is an indispensable guide to the understanding of poetry.