A selection of new and revised essays from eminent scholar and critic Professor Christopher Ricks. Christopher Ricks brings together new as well as substantially augmented critical essays across a wide range. Several derive from his term as the Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, when his inaugural lecture engaged with the illuminatingly puzzled relations between poetry and prose. Comparison and analysis (the tools of the critic, as T.S. Eliot insisted) are enlivened by imaginative pairings: of Samuel Johnson with Samuel Beckett, of Norman Mailer with Dickens, of Shakespeare with George Herbert, or of secret-police surveillance in Ben Jonson's Rome with that of Carmen Bugan's Romania. Along Heroic Lines devotes itself to the heroic and to 'heroics' (Othello cross-examined by T.S. Eliot; Byron and role-playing; Ion Bugan, political protest and arrest). This knot is in tension with the English heroic line (Dryden's heroic triplets, Henry James's cadences, Geoffrey Hill's concluding book of prose-poems and how they choose to conclude). All alert to the balance and sustenance of alternate tones that prose and poetry can achieve in harmony.
Christopher Ricks Volgorde van de boeken
Christopher Ricks is een Britse literatuurcriticus en academicus, bekend om zijn verdediging van de Victoriaanse poëzie en zijn enthousiasme voor de songteksten van Bob Dylan. Zijn recensies zijn scherp, waarbij hij degenen aanvalt die hij pretentieus acht, terwijl hij degenen die hij menselijk of humoristisch vindt, warm prijst. Zijn kritische intelligentie en welsprekende proza zijn ongeëvenaard, waardoor hij het soort criticus is waar elke dichter van droomt.






- 2021
- 2011
Dylan´s Visions of Sin
- 528bladzijden
- 19 uur lezen
A critically-acclaimed examination of Bob Dylan's lyrics as poetry, through the prism of the 7 Deadly Sins
- 2010
A collection of poetry compiled by Christopher Ricks, Oxford Professor of Poetry between 2004 and 2009, who during his tenure arranged for 29 poets - a roughly equal mixture of British and American, established and new - to read from their work. This book brings together a generous selection of work by all of those poets and also contains a coda, ......
- 2010
What Maisie knew
- 304bladzijden
- 11 uur lezen
What Maisie Knew (1897) represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue.In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child's capacity for intelligent `wonder', James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie inspires James to dwell with extraordinary acuteness on the things that may pass between adult and child. In addition to a new introduction, this edition of the novel offers particularly detailed notes, bibliography, and a list of variant readings.
- 2007
Imprescindible para los seguidores de Dylan, el libro del profesor Christopher Ricks analiza con mirada crítica las composiciones del cantante y poeta norteamericano -al que emparenta con los grandes poetas anglosajones T. S. Eliot, Gerard M. Hopkins, Tennyson, John Donne, William Blake y Philip Larkin- comparando incluso al bardo norteamericano, por su genio, ingenio y desenvoltura para saltarse las normas, con el propio William Shakespeare, a quien se conoce popularmente en los países anglosajones como «The Bard». En este brillante análisis, firmemente argumentado con los vastos conocimientos literarios de una larga vida académica dedicada a estudiar la poesía de T. S. Eliot, Milton, Tennyson y Keats, el profesor Ricks, catedrático de Literatura Inglesa de la Universidad de Oxford, analiza las principales canciones de Dylan en un intento de desentrañar dónde reside su misterioso atractivo. Ricks se propone averiguar por qué considera que pertenecen por pleno derecho al acervo de la poesía contemporánea. Ricks, a quien algunos sitúan junto a Harold Bloom en la cima de la crítica anglosajona contemporánea, no trata de convencernos de la calidad intrínseca del compositor norteamericano, sino que se limita a desmenuzar las letras de las canciones de Dylan y a analizar su modo de interpretarlas para averiguar por qué poseen esa magia que hace que se sigan escuchando cuarenta años después.
- 2004
Allusion to the Poets
- 352bladzijden
- 13 uur lezen
Focusing on the intricate relationships between writers, this collection of essays by Christopher Ricks explores how authors, particularly poets, engage with each other's work. It delves into various forms of literary interaction, ranging from respectful allusions to the serious implications of plagiarism. With several essays newly written for this volume, Ricks offers a critical examination of the literary landscape and the dynamics of influence and appropriation among writers.
- 2003
Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatched in its absurd and timeless wit Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations. The text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks's introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- 1996
In Essays in Appreciation, Christopher Ricks continues the work of his highly-praised The Force of Poetry, with lively and provoking essays on poets and poetry. In addition, Ricks puts his appreciative pen in the service of other literary figures and genres, including drama, the novel, history and philosophy, and a discussion of Victorian biographies. Ricks wraps up the collection with a series of critical questions on literature and theory; plus two notes--on the canon, and on Empson and political criticism. W.H. Auden once wrote of Christopher Ricks that "he is exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding;" with this latest volume every scholar as well as serious reader will join the poet in finding much to appreciate.
- 1995
Beckett's Dying Words
- 224bladzijden
- 8 uur lezen
Most people want to live forever. But there is another the longing for oblivion. With pain, wit, and humor, the art of Samuel Beckett variously embodies this truth, this ancient enduring belief that it is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born. Beckett is the supreme writer of an age which has created new possibilities and impossibilities even in the matter of death and its definition--an age of transplants and life-support.But how does a writer give life to dismay at life itself, to the not unwelcome encroachments of death, when it is for the life, the vitality of their language that we value writers? Beckett became himself as a writer when he realized in his very words a principle of in clichés, which are dead but won't lie down; in a dead language and its memento mori; in words which mean their own opposites, like cleaving; and in what Beckett called a syntax of weakness.This artful study explores the relation between deep convictions about life or death and the incarnations which these take in the exact turns of a great writer, the realizations of an Irishman who wrote in English and in French, two languages with different apprehensions of life and of death.
- 1994
This is a collection of writings that aim to analyze America and American culture.
