Nonfiction
Autumn 1959
The Image of Antony: Lyric and Tragic Imagination
Anthony is no explorer of consciousness. He has very little Hamlet or Macbeth in him. Nor does he, like a Lear, come into his tragic self by the eloquence of […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1958
The Criticism of Allegory
The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in Book II of Spenser’s Faerie Queene by Harry Berger, Jr. Yale University Press. $5.00. Critical ideas and methods which have enjoyed high prestige […]
English Verse and What It Sounds Like
Summer 1956
A Note on Meter
What does meter do in a poem? It is already a kind of form before the poet begins his poem. And what happens finally to meter? Is it absorbed into […]
English Verse and What It Sounds Like
Summer 1956
Donne’s Prosody
(From an essay in the Kenyon Review of Spring 1951.) How shall we read the last three words of this line?— So, if I dreame I have you, I have […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1953
Structures of Sound in Milton’s Verse¹
I now turn to some problems in Milton’s management of structures of sound, and by this phrase, instead of some version of the more familiar “Miltonic music,” I intend to […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1952
The Business of “Wonder”
Woe or Wonder: The Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy by J. V. Cunningham. University of Denver Press. $2.50 Mr. Cunningham’s book on Shakespearean tragedy is a valuable demonstration of critical […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1951
The Criticism of Wyatt
Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt edited by Kenneth Muir. The Muses’ Library. Harvard Press. $2.10. Wyatt seems to me the most important neglected poet of the English Renaissance. He […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1951
Structures of Sound in Donne’s Verse (Continued)
IV My second category is the use of sound to imitate directly the sense of what is being said. At one extreme all the resources of style are used, with […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1951
Structures of Sound in Donne’s Verse
Perhaps the best historical introduction to Donne’s kind of verse is Ben Jonson’s blunt remark made to Drummond—that verses stand by sense, without “either Colours or accent.” There are specific […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1943
Shakespeare Allegorized
Shakespeare and the Nature of Man by Theodore Spencer. Macmillan. $2.75 Mr. Spencer undertakes three critical tasks. He presents his pattern of the Renaissance intellectual background, relates Shakespeare’s plays to […]