An account of Greek tragedy, it demonstrates how the elements of plot, character and spectacle combine to produce 'pity and fear' - and why we derive pleasure from this painful process. It introduces the crucial concepts of mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis, which have informed serious thinking about drama ever since.

A comprehensive reference work dealing with different aspects of its subject: history, types, movements, prosody, and critical terminology. First published in 1965, this encyclopedia features entries which include those on cultural criticism, discourse, feminist poetics, and Chicano poetry.

One of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories and dreams. AVAILABLE NOW.

This anthology illuminates the history, practice, and wonder of our most elusive art, poetry. Intended for all those who love poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students. The anthology draws the reader in to the excitement and entertainment of various poetic forms.

A survey of the schemes, patterns and forms of English verse. John Hollander illustrates each variation with a self-descriptive example. In this third edition, he adds a section of examples taken from centuries of poetry that exhibit the patterns he has described.

A work first published in 1948 in which Graves argues that the language of poetic myth current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse - some dating from the Old Stone Age.

Offers tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets - aspiring or practicing - can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own literary oeuvre and from other contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader.

Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, this book gives you the tools and the confidence to do so with enjoyable exercises, insights and simple step-by-step advice.

This collection of prose writings by Adrienne Rich, an American poet and feminist theorist, reflects upon themes that have shaped her life and work. Issues explored include the politics of language, the uses of scholarship, racism, history and motherhood.

From 1903 to 1908, German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of responses to a young would-be poet, on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. An accompanying chronicle of Rilke's life comments on his own experiences at the time.

During a week in January 1981, poets Allen Grossman and Mark Halliday met for a series of conversations exploring the meanings for us as poets arising from the difference between us-- differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and poetic style. The result was Against Our Vanishing , which Charles Altieri called the best in contemporary poetic thinking. The Sighted ..

A straightforward and practical introduction to rhythm and meter in poetry in English.

This source book provides an understanding of contemporary writing which articulates the multidisciplinary and polytextual nature of this writing's core investigations.

Writing Poetry 2/e provides an introduction to the creative processes. Writing exercises provide structured learning experiences so students build both skill and confidence.

Heaney here scrutinizes the work of several poets, British and Irish, American and European, whose work he considers might call into question the rights of poetic utterance. The author asks whether the voice of the poet should be governed, or whether it should be the governor.

Presents an exploration of what it means to be a writer and a woman in contemporary society.

A study of the Romantic poets and the relation between tradition and the individual artist. For this second edition Bloom offers a new introduction which explains the genesis of his thinking and the subsequent influence of the book on literary criticism.

The transcription of a collection of lectures, given at Harvard between 1967 to 1968, by the author Jorge Luis Borges. This book details Borges's theories on poetry, prose forms, literary history and the philosophy of literature, drawing on examples from literature across the world.

All of author's major meditations on the theory and practice of poetry are included in this volume. He focuses his attention on the deliberate formal work that transforms the dream into the poem, in his own poems, as well as in analyses of La Fontaine, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, the Symbolists, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and others.