Shades of Authority: The Poetry of Lowell, Hill and Heaney
Stephen James
Abstract
What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative are precisely those whose works wrestle with a sense of artistic inadequacy? Such questions lie at the heart of this book, prompting fresh insights into three of the most important poets of recent decades: Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney. Through attentive close readings, the author shows how their responsiveness to matters of political and cultural import lends weight to the idea of ... More
What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative are precisely those whose works wrestle with a sense of artistic inadequacy? Such questions lie at the heart of this book, prompting fresh insights into three of the most important poets of recent decades: Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney. Through attentive close readings, the author shows how their responsiveness to matters of political and cultural import lends weight to the idea of poetry as authoritative utterance — but also how each is exercised by a sense of the limitations and liabilities of language itself.
Keywords:
power,
poetry,
authority,
artistic inadequacy,
Robert Lowell,
Geoffrey Hill,
Seamus Heaney,
language
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781846311178 |
| Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: June 2013 |
DOI:10.5949/UPO9781846314049 |
