The poet George Barker was convinced that his biography could never be written. 'I've stirred the facts around too much,' he told Robert Fraser. 'It simply can't be done.' Eliot wrote of his 'genius'. Yeats thought him the most interesting poet of his generation. Dylan Thomas envied his power over women. War trapped him in Japan. In America he conducted one of the most celebrated love affairs of the century. He fathered fifteen children in several countries, three during one battle-torn summer. By the 1950s he was the toast of Soho. Barker was Catholic and bohemian, frank and elusive, tender and boisterous. In Eliot's phrase, he was 'a most peculiar fellow.' Robert Fraser's biography offers both a portrait of a talented, tormented and irresistibly entertaining man, and a broad cultural landscape. Around the central figure cluster painters like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Johnny Minton and the 'Roberts' Colquhoun and MacBryde; writers such as Dylan Thomas, Walter de la Mare and Elizabeth Smart, whose By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept hymns their liaison; the lugubrious humorist Jeffrey Bernard. After closing time at the Colony Room, Minton declared, they had to sweep up the jokes.

Regarding philosophical importance, Edmund Husserl is arguably "the" German export of the early twentieth century. In the wake of the linguistic turn(s) of the humanities, however, his claim to return to the "Sachen selbst" became metonymic for the neglect of language in Western philosophy. This view has been particularly influential in post-structural literary theory, which has never ceased to attack the supposed "logophobie" of phenomenology. "Phenomenology to the Letter. Husserl and Literature" challenges this verdict regarding the poetological and logical implications of Husserl’s work through a thorough re-examination of his writing in the context of literary theory, classical rhetoric, and modern art. At issue is an approach to phenomenology and literature that does not merely coordinate the two discourses but explores their mutual implication. Contributions to the volume attend to the interplay between phenomenology and literature (both fiction and poetry), experience and language, as well as images and embodiment. The volume is the first of its kind to chart a phenomenological approach to literature and literary approach to phenomenology. As such it stands poised to make a novel contribution to literary studies and philosophy.

This Is An Original Approach To Poetry, The Poetic Process And To An Interpretation Of The Various Constituents Of Poetry And Of The Configuration Of All These Elements Into The Magic That Is Poetry, Supported By The Tradition Of Indian Aesthetics That Has Always Regarded Great Poets As Seers And Prophets. Stimulated By European Literary Criticism And By Modern Critics Like T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards And The New Critics, Indian Aesthetics And Modern Indian Thinkers Like Sri Aurobindo, Professor Vinayak Krishna Gokak Has Formulated A Theory Of Poetry Which Is A New And Synthetic Statement Doing Justice To All Aspects Of The Subject. His Experience As Professor Of English Language And Literature In Quite A Few Indian Universities And As Professor Of Literary Interpretation To Teachers And Lecturers From All Over India Has Stood Him In Good Stead In This Formulation. The Book Opens With An Account Of The Poetic Process In Which All The Key-Words Of Aesthetic Theory,-Inspiration, Imitation, Expression, Communication, Persuasion And Configuration -Are Seen To Fit Into Their Places In A Comprehensive Account Of The Poetic Process. This Is Followed By Chapters On: Vision In Poetry, The Four Levels Of Poetic Vision, The Five Kinds Of Poetic Vision The Poet And The Structure Of Personality. The Most Original Part Of This Account Of Poetry Comes Up Next In An Analysis Of Attitudes And Moods In Poetry. This Is Followed By Chapters On: Poetic Meaning, Rhythm, Imagery, Diction, Style Propriety, A Touchstone Of Poetry And The Fulfilment Of Poetry. Students Of Poetry Who Pick Up This Book Will Not Be Easily Inclined To Lay It Down Till They Have Finished Reading It. For Many Of Them, It Will Be A Profound Experience To Be Cherished And Remembered For Long.

The guiding theme of these essays is the fate of the imagination and the condition of art in the modern world, where both appear to be enfeebled by scientific hubris, undermined by psychological self-questioning and compromised by political disaster. Erich Heller traces this predicament with subtlety and profundity, from Hegel's and Nietzsche's diagnoses to the various truces and manoeuvres through which remarkable victories have nonetheless been achieved - such as the comic triumphs of Wilhelm Busch. As elsewhere in Professor Heller's work, Thomas Mann's attempt to outwit and redeem his circumstances through art - 'despite' them, as he said himself - occupies a central place. Three of the present essays are devoted to him. Others consider Kleist, Fontane, Hamsun, Karl Kraus and the crucial figures of Hölderlin (who plays such a central role in Heidegger's later philosophical writings) and Rilke. Written with feeling, and the distinctive elegance and wit that have characterized all of Professor Heller's work, the essays here reaffirm the vital interdependence of literature and human values.

Originally published in 1956, this anthology aims to introduce English prose literature to an audience of new readers.

This book revisits British Romanticism as a poetics of heightened attention. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as Britain was on the alert for a possible French invasion, attention became a phenomenon of widespread interest, one that aligned and distinguished an unusual range of fields (including medicine, aesthetics, theology, ethics, pedagogy, and politics). Within this wartime context, the Romantic aesthetic tradition appears as a response to a crisis in attention caused by demands on both soldiers and civilians to keep watch. Close formal readings of the poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Cowper, Keats, (Charlotte) Smith, and Wordsworth, in conversation with research into Enlightenment philosophy and political and military discourses, suggest the variety of forces competing for—or commanding—attention in the period. This new framework for interpreting Romanticism and its legacy illuminates what turns out to be an ongoing tradition of war literature that, rather than give testimony to or represent warfare, uses rhythm and verse to experiment with how and what we attend to during times of war.