TY - BOOK ID - 80815775 TI - The Blank-Verse Tradition from Milton to Stevens PY - 2012 SN - 9781139517126 1139517120 9781139518987 1139518984 9781139178921 113917892X 9781107025400 1107025400 9781139515474 1139515470 9781107507838 1107232104 1139508377 1280774630 9786613685001 1139518054 1139514555 1107507839 PB - Cambridge Cambridge University Press DB - UniCat KW - Blank verse, English KW - English literature KW - English blank verse KW - English poetry KW - History and criticism. KW - Arts and Humanities KW - Literature UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:80815775 AB - Blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, has been central to English poetry since the Renaissance. It is the basic vehicle of Shakespeare's plays and the form in which Milton chose to write Paradise Lost. Milton associated it with freedom, and the Romantics, connecting it in turn with freethinking, used it to explore change and confront modernity, sometimes in unexpectedly radical ways. Henry Weinfield's detailed readings of the masterpieces of English blank verse focus on Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson and Stevens. He traces the philosophical and psychological struggles underlying these poets' choice of form and genre, and the extent to which their work is marked, consciously or not, by the influence of other poets. Unusually attuned to echoes between poems, this study sheds new light on how important poetic texts, most of which are central to the literary canon, unfold as works of art. ER -