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A Defence of Poetry

10 best books like A Defence of Poetry (Philip Sidney): The Elizabethan World Picture, Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions, Preface to Shakespeare, An Essay on Criticism, On Poetry And Poets, The Complete Poems and Major Prose, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, The Sea and the Mirror, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment

The Elizabethan World Picture
AuthorEustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard
ISBN0394701623
This brief & illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age & later is an useful companion for readers of the great writers of the 16th & 17th centuries: Shakespeare, the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne, Milton etc. The basic medieval idea of an ordered...
Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions
AuthorSamuel Taylor Coleridge
ISBN0691018618
"Biographia Literaria" has emerged over the last century as a supreme work of literary criticism and one of the classics of English literature. Into this volume poured 20 years of speculation about the criticism and uses of poetry and about the psychology of art. Following the text of the 1817 edition,...
Preface to Shakespeare
AuthorSamuel Johnson
ISBN1406535087
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson, was one of England's greatest literary figures: a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist, well known for his aphorisms. Between 1745 and 1755, Johnson...
An Essay on Criticism
AuthorAlexander Pope
ISBN1419106406
Ahem. It's kind of awkward, trying to review a great poem about reviewing. I have to reread everything I type and examine it for Pope's fiercely lambasted Follies. I believe I shall confine my comments to this:

-This is as true now as it was 301 years ago, when it was published. (It both pleases...
On Poetry And Poets
AuthorT.S. Eliot
ISBN0571089836
My Ph.D advisor Leonard Unger made his career on the first book studying TS Eliot's verse, in 1947, and to the end of his life, as a scholar and wit, he returned to Eliot's subjects, like 17C wits (and Shakespeare) as well as to Eliot himself, in Eliot's Compound Ghost, which strongly influenced my own dissertation,...
The Complete Poems and Major Prose
AuthorJohn Milton
ISBN0872206785
I won't write a long review for this work, as I've written individual reviews for most of the works contained in it (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Comus, Samson Agonistes, Doctrine of Divorce, Christian Doctrine, etc.).

I picked up this collection about 8 or 9 years ago with the intent...
Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare
AuthorStephen Greenblatt
ISBN0226306593
Renaissance Self-Fashioning is a study of sixteenth-century life and literature that spawned a new era of scholarly inquiry. Stephen Greenblatt examines the structure of selfhood as evidenced in major literary figures of the English Renaissance—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and...
The Sea and the Mirror
AuthorW.H. Auden
ISBN0691123845
Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, "The Sea and the Mirror" is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is "really about the Christian conception...
The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
AuthorCleanth Brooks
ISBN0156957051
In my freshman year of college, I remembered reading Brooks' essay on Keats: A Sylvan Historian, I was completely engulfed with Mr. Brooks interpretation of the poem. It gave me a different perspective on how to further analyze Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. Moreover, when I read the essay, I felt like I...
Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment
AuthorIvor A. Richards
ISBN0765808439
Linguist, critic, poet, psychologist, I. A. Richards (1893-1979) was one of the great polymaths of the twentieth century. He is best known, however, as one of the founders of modern literary critical theory. Richards revolutionized criticism by turning away from biographical and historical readings...
Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse
AuthorJohn Hollander
ISBN0300088329
This book is chock full of great information about poetry. It talks about poetic devices, different forms and styles of poetry, and different sorts of feet, and all sorts of useful and relevant information. The problem is, this book is not organized at all, and the explanations are all given in the forms...
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
AuthorJ.A. Cuddon
ISBN0140513639
The latest installment of this trusted literary companion covers all aspects of literary theory, from definitions of technical terms to characterizations of literary movements. Geared toward students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary...
Absalom and Achitophel
AuthorJohn Dryden
ISBN1419104535
Excerpt from Absalom and Achitophel:

'Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage, He chooses Athens in his riper age.'

But these lines prove nothing, being probably prompted by no other motive than the desire of the moment to please an Oxford audience. A passage in a letter from Dryden...
Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930
AuthorMalcolm Bradbury
ISBN0140138323
History

Any reader of literary fiction from the last 120 years will sooner or later encounter the distinction between Modernism and Post-Modernism.

My teenage years coincided with the 1970's. During this period I became a consumer and advocate of Modernism, whether or not I could...
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
AuthorG.K. Chesterton
ISBN1417919965
Not really a Critical Study, as originally subtitled, Chesterton’s Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men is instead a breezy, piquant, thoroughly personal account of the delights of Dickens. It’s the alluring kind of introduction one always needs, for that author towards whom one is well...
The Major Works: Including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons
AuthorJohn Donne
John Donne (1572-1631) is perhaps the most important poet of the seventeenth century, and has often been referred to as the founder of the metaphysical genre. His poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of tones, images, forms, and personae. This collection of Donne's verse...
The Complete Poems
AuthorBen Jonson
ISBN0140422773
One of the greatest English playwrights of the seventeenth century, Ben Jonson was also a deeply influential lyric poet, whose poetry combined classical ideals with a vigorous interest in contemporary life and colloquial language. The Complete Poems contains all the volumes of poetry Jonson published...
A Defence of Poetry
AuthorPercy Bysshe Shelley
ISBN1430482842
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages,...
The Dream of the Rood
AuthorCynewulf
ISBN0859895033
The Dream of the Rood is a poem that has entranced generations of scholars. It is one of the greatest religious poems in English literature, the work of a nameless poet of superb genius.

This edition presents a conservative text with variant reading described in the notes. In his introduction...
The Faerie Queene, Book Two
AuthorEdmund Spenser
ISBN0872208478
From its opening scenes--in which the hero refrains from fighting a duel, then discovers that his horse has been stolen--Book Two of The Faerie Queene redefines the nature of heroism and of chivalry. Its hero is Sir Guyon, the knight of Temperance, whose challenges frequently take the form of temptations....
On Great Writing (On the Sublime)
AuthorLonginus
ISBN0872200809
Celebrated for its own clarity and sublime style, this classic work of literary theory draws on the writings of Demosthenes, Plato, Sappho, Thucydides, Euripides, and Aeschylus, among others, to examine and delineate the essentials of a noble style. The complete translation, from the Greek of A....
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