Essays in Appreciation [Paperback]

Christopher Ricks (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0192880845 | ISBN-13: 978-0192880840 | Publication Date: September 24, 1998

In Essays in Appreciation, Christopher Ricks continues the work of his highly-praised The Force of Poetry, with lively and provoking essays on poets and poetry. In addition, Ricks puts his appreciative pen in the service of other literary figures and genres, including drama, the novel, history and philosophy, and a discussion of Victorian biographies. Ricks wraps up the collection with a series of critical questions on literature and theory; plus two notes--on the canon, and on Empson and political criticism. W.H. Auden once wrote of Christopher Ricks that "he is exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding;" with this latest volume every scholar as well as serious reader will join the poet in finding much to appreciate.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jane Austen disliked babies and young children, so depictions of a loving relationship between an adult and a child are notably absent from her novels, which instead satirize parental doting. Thomas Carlyle, who at the age of 70 read his wife's journals after her death, realized how much he was to blame for her profound unhappiness; remorse shaped his life for the next 15 years. Ricks (The Force of Poetry) teases out little-known connections between writers' lives and art in these erudite yet almost conversational essays and lectures. He detects misogyny in poet John Donne's bitter repudiation of love and sex. Faustus's bargain with the Devil in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, guaranteeing that he would live for another 24 years, takes on new meaning as Ricks surveys the plagues that ravaged Elizabethan England. Other essays in this eclectic collection deal with Victorian biography (Tennyson, Charlotte Bronte), George Crabbe as a poet of bondage to tradition, George Eliot's Middlemarch and Robert Lowell's translation of Racine's Phedre.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Bracing, witty, caustic, generous: this is extraordinarily alive critical writing. These are essays of a master hand, all the more to be appreciated themselves in their sheer attentiveness. They hold writing to its own best self."--Modern Philology

"...the book makes for rewarding reading...the insightful, sensitive interpretations Ricks provides place the book in the limited category of critical writings with appeal beyond a narrow academic circle. In large measure he achieves the critic's function--enhancing the reader's appreciation for well-known works and making manifest the merits of lesser-known titles."--Magill's Literary Annual 1997

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 24, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192880845
• ISBN-13: 978-0192880840
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,801,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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