Names, Proverbs, Riddles, and Material Text in Robert Frost

This study examines several unexplored aspects of Robert Frost's poetry--proverbs, riddles, and names--and shows how they contribute to the reader's experience. Timothy D. O'Brien argues that while they often shape Frost's poems as sites of inviting wisdom and play, these features also open up the poems to radical doubt about identity, authorship, and reality. This book offers the most extensive research to date of the relationship between Frost's poetry and the visual art that often accompanied it and sheds new light on the work of one of the twentieth century's most highly regarded poets.

Timothy D. O’Brien is Professor of English at the United States Naval Academy. He has published a variety of articles on such subjects as Middle English Romance, Malory, Chaucer, Henry Fielding, Hemingway, and Robert Frost.