Difficulty in Poetry: A Stylistic Model - Hardcover

Castiglione, Davide

 
9783319970004: Difficulty in Poetry: A Stylistic Model
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 3319970003 ISBN 13: 9783319970004
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Synopsis

This book theoretically defines and linguistically analyses the popular notion that poetry is ‘difficult’ - hard to read, hard to understand, hard to engage with. It is the first work to offer a stylistic and cognitive model that sheds new light on the mechanisms of difficulty, as well as on its range of potential effects. Its eight chapters are organised into two thematic parts. The first traces the history of difficulty, surveys its main scholarly traditions, addresses related themes – from elitism to obscurity, from abstraction to intentionality – and introduces a wide array of analytical tools from literary theory and cognitive psychology. These tools are then consistently applied in the second part, which includes several extended analyses of poems by canonical modernists such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane, alongside those of postmodernist innovators such as Geoffrey Hill, Susan Howe and Charles Bernstein, among others. This innovative work will provide fresh insights and approaches for scholars of stylistics, literary studies, cognitive poetics and psychology.

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About the Author

Davide Castiglione is a lecturer in the Department of English Philology at Vilnius University, Lithuania. Author of two poetry collections, and a specialist in the poetics and stylistics of poetry, his research has been published in the Journal of Literary Semantics and in Language and Literature.

From the Back Cover

This book theoretically defines and linguistically analyses the popular notion that poetry is ‘difficult’ - hard to read, hard to understand, hard to engage with. It is the first work to offer a stylistic and cognitive model that sheds new light on the mechanisms of difficulty, as well as on its range of potential effects. Its eight chapters are organised into two thematic parts. The first traces the history of difficulty, surveys its main scholarly traditions, addresses related themes – from elitism to obscurity, from abstraction to intentionality – and introduces a wide array of analytical tools from literary theory and cognitive psychology. These tools are then consistently applied in the second part, which includes several extended analyses of poems by canonical modernists such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane, alongside those of postmodernist innovators such as Geoffrey Hill, Susan Howe and Charles Bernstein, among others. This innovative work will provide fresh insights and approaches for scholars of stylistics, literary studies, cognitive poetics and psychology. 




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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date
2018
Language
English
ISBN 10 
3319970003
ISBN 13 
9783319970004
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
402

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9783030072834: Difficulty in Poetry: A Stylistic Model

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  3030072835 ISBN 13:  9783030072834
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018
Softcover