See the Virgin Blest The Virgin Mary in English Poetry

This is a fascinating literary-critical study of the ways the Virgin Mary has been presented in English poetry, from the later Middle Ages to today. Ranging across a vast variety of approaches to this timeless topic, Spurr shows how poets have spoken of their own beliefs and preoccupations (and of their cultures and their historical periods) in giving poetic expression to the most famous woman in history. Spurr's ground-breaking account is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the history of poetry, of religious verse and of representations of the eternal feminine in literature.

Barry Spurr has been a member of the Sydney University English Department for more than thirty years. Publishing widely on Renaissance and Modernist poetics, his previous books include The Word in the Desert (1995), Lytton Strachey (1995), and the acclaimed Studying Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), now in its second edition. His next book will be on T.S. Eliot’s Anglo-Catholicism.