Known as the Age of Reason, the 18th century was an ear of relative peace, prosperity and growth. The poetry of this time is characterized on the one hand by urban satire--the rapier genius of Pope, the biting irony of Swift; on the other hand there existed the pastoral poetic world of rural meditation found in Gray's "Elegy", Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village", and the odes of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea.
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
This anthology features a number of good performances, such as Judi Dench's feisty interpretation of Swift's delightful but little known "To Their Excellencies the Lords Justice of Ireland," Alan Cumming's spirited delivery of a song from Sheridan's play The School for Scandal, and Crawford Logan's sensitive reading of Samuel Johnson's beautifully austere "The Vanity of Human Wishes." But despite the presence of classics such as Gray's "Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard," and Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," the poems here are not the best in the series (e.g., Penguin English Verse, Vol. 1: The Sixteenth Century, Wyatt to Shakespeare, Audio Reviews, LJ 11/1/96.) because English verse was not at its best. And too little of the narration is sufficiently distinctive to turn silver into gold. Moreover, this series has an overt technical flaw-low volume level. Nevertheless, Penguin has supplied us with an introductory course spanning 400 years of English poetry and, to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, what's remarkable is not so much that it does the thing well as that it does the thing at all. Until better verse surveys arrive, this imperfect attempt is indispensable. Recommended.
Peter Josyph, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Peter Josyph, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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