Rhyme and Reason
eBook - ePub

Rhyme and Reason

A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Rhyme and Reason

A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon

About this book

'Enchanting' Stephen Fry

Did you know:
- Lord Byron sold more books in a day than Jane Austen did in her lifetime
- During the First World War there were more women poets published than soldier poets
- A kitchen-maid became one of the most popular poets of the 18th century

Some people worry that they don't appreciate poetry; but English poetry wasn't written to be appreciated, it was written to be enjoyed. For six centuries people have been reading poetry for enjoyment - for fun, romance, religion and entertainment - and this is a book about those people.

Rhyme ### Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, and into the heart of Byromania and the Victorian hearth, to help you understand why poetry has had such an enduring hold on the British psyche.

From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings, it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.

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Yes, you can access Rhyme and Reason by Mark Forsyth in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & British History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Preface
  6. 1 The First English Poem
  7. 2 For Engelonde’s Sake
  8. 3 The Fifteenth Century, Which Is Mainly Rubbish
  9. 4 Down on the Farm
  10. 5 The Early Tudors
  11. 6 Tottely Different
  12. 7 The Iambic Pentameter: An Interlude
  13. 8 Elizabethan Drama
  14. 9 Jacobean Theatre
  15. 10 Metaphysical Poetry
  16. 11 The Civil War and Commonwealth
  17. 12 The Restoration
  18. 13 The Epic
  19. 14 An Interlude Concerning the World
  20. 15 Heroic Couplets: The Truth in Twenty Syllables
  21. 16 Ossian and Others
  22. 17 Regency Poetry
  23. 18 Byromania
  24. 19 The Romantic Myth of the Romantic Movement
  25. 20 The Deification of William Wordsworth
  26. 21 Dramatic Victorians
  27. 22 Anapaests, Dactyls and Other Strange Feet
  28. 23 Uttered Nonsense
  29. 24 The Nineteenth-Century Ballad
  30. 25 Empire and England, England, England
  31. 26 War Poetry
  32. 27 New Things Under the Sun
  33. 28 Poetry Goes to School
  34. 29 Old-Fashioned Modernism
  35. 30 Moderner Modernism
  36. 31 A Valediction Requiring Mourning
  37. Postscript: The Other Fellow
  38. Acknowledgements
  39. Very, Very Select Bibliography