Defending Poetry by David-Antoine Williams

Defending Poetry by David-Antoine Williams

Defending Poetry studies the tradition of poetic defence, or apologia, as it has been pursued and developed by three of the twentieth century's leading poet-critics: Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill. It begins with an extended introduction to philosophical debates over the ethical value of literature from Plato to Levinas and continues by situating these three poets as in one sense historically continuous with the defences of Horace, Sidney, Coleridge, and Shelley, but also as drastically other. This otherness is bounded on one side by the example of T. S. Eliot's career-long contemplation of the ideal of poetic 'integrity', and on the other by a collective recognition of the twentieth century's great horrors, which seem to corrode all associations of art and the good. Through close readings of the poems and prose essays of Brodsky, Heaney, and Hill, Defending Poetry makes a timely intervention in current debates about literature's ethics, arguing that any ethics of literature ought to take into account not only poetry, but also the writings of poets on the value of poetry.

Williams' prose style is graceful and exact.. Defending Poetry is especially appealing in its implicit protest to academic trends which ask us to read poetry in search of its (dis)contents, political or otherwise. Woven into Williams' good book is an appreciation for the intellectual and spiritual experience of reading -the dance of the intellect, the music of the language, the very look of words on the page, and above all the radical challenge to prevailing powers that caused Plato to banish poets from his ideal republic in the first place. * Alex Shakespeare, Christianity and Literature *
informative and rewarding. * Michael McKie, Essays in Criticism *
a very interesting argument indeed, and in his opening sections Williams defends it with vigour, sensitivity and an astonishing range of reference. * Stephen Prickett, Times Literary Supplement *

David-Antoine Williams was educated at Harvard University, The University of St Andrews, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he completed his doctoral work. He is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and a Junior Research Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199583546
ISBN 10	0199583544
Title	Defending Poetry
Author	David-Antoine Williams
Series	Oxford English Monographs
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2010-09-23
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.