Collected Critical WritingsThe Collected Critical Writings of Geoffrey Hill gathers more than forty years of Hill's published criticism, in a revised final form, and also adds much new work. It will serve as the canonical volume of criticism by Hill, the pre-eminent poet-critic whom A. N. Wilson has called 'probably the best writer alive, in verse or in prose'. In his criticism Hill ranges widely, investigating both poets (including Jonson, Dryden, Hopkins, Whitman, Eliot, and Yeats ) and prose writers (such as Tyndale, Clarendon, Hobbes, Burton, Emerson, and F. H. Bradley). He is also steeped in the historical context - political, poetic, and religious - of the writers he studies. Most importantly, he brings texts and contexts into new and telling relations, neither reducing texts to the circumstances of their utterance nor imagining that they can float free of them. A number of the essays have already established themselves as essential reading on particular subjects, such as his analysis of Vaughan's 'The Night', his discussion of Gurney's poetry, and his critical account of The Oxford English Dictionary. Others confront the problems of language and the nature of value directly, as in 'Our Word is Our Bond', 'Language, Suffering, and Value', and 'Poetry and Value'. In all his criticism, Hill reveals literature to be an essential arena of civic intelligence. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accept appears argument beauty become body Bradley called Cambridge circumstances claim Clarendon Press Coleridge Collected common Complete critical distinction diVerent Donne Dryden edition Eliot Emerson England English Essays experience expression fact feeling force further genius give Green Gurney heart Henry Hobbes Hopkins human Ibid idea imagination James John kind language Lectures less Letters light literary living London matter means mind moral nature object observation once original Oxford particular perhaps philosophical phrase play Poems poet poetic poetry political possible Pound practice present Prose question quoted reader Reality reason reference rhetorical Robert seems sense speak spirit stand style suggestion taken things Thomas thought translation true truth turn understanding University Press verse Whitman words writes wrote Wrst York