A Companion to Eighteenth-century Poetry

This wide-rangingCompanionreflects the dramatic transformation which has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades. New essays by leading scholars in the field address an expanded poetic canon which now incorporates verse by many women poets and other formerly marginalised poetic voices. The volume engages with topical critical debates such as the production and consumption of literary texts, the constructions of femininity, sentiment and sensibility, enthusiasm, politics and aesthetics, and the growth of imperialism.TheCompanionopens with a section on contexts, considering eighteenth-century poetry's relationships with such topics as religion, science, the visual arts, and the literary marketplace. A series of close readings of specific poems follows, ranging from familiar texts such as Pope'sThe Rape of the Lockto slightly less well-known works such as Swift'sStellapoems and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu'sTown Eclogues. Essays on forms and genres, and a series of more provocative contributions on significant themes and debates, complete the volume.TheCompaniongives readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry, and is designed to be used alongside David Fairer and Christine Gerrard'sEighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology(Blackwell, Second Edition, 2004).

Christine Gerrard is Fellow and Tutor in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. She is the author of The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742 (1994) and Aaron Hill: The Muses' Projector, 1685–1750 (2003). She is the co-editor, with David Fairer, of Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell, second edition, 2003).