Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Republic (excerpt), by Plato 2. Poetics, by Aristotle 3. "Ars Poetica," by Horace 4. Germania (excerpt), by Publius Cornelius Tacitus 5. "On the Sublime" (excerpt), by Longinus(?) 6. Skaldskaparmal, by Snorri Sturluson 7. The Defence of Poesy, by Sir Philip Sidney 8. "Of Education" (excerpt), by John Milton 9. An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, by John Dryden 10. An Essay on Criticism, by Alexander Pope Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot 11. Lives of the Poets (excerpts), by Samuel Johnson "Life of Milton" "Preface to Abraham Cowley" "Life of Dryden" "Life of Thomas Gray" 12. The Progress of Poesy, by Thomas Gray 13. Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth 14. Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 15. The State of Modern Poetry (excerpt), by Francis Jeffrey 16. On Poetry in General (excerpt), by William Hazlitt 17. The Four Ages of Poetry (excerpt), by Thomas Love Peacock 18. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (excerpt), by George Gordon, Lord Byron 19. A Defence of Poetry, by Percy Bysshe Shelley 20. The Poet, by William Cullen Bryant 21. Poems, by John Keats 22. The Poet (excerpt), by Ralph Waldo Emerson 23. Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book (excerpt), by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 24. Poems, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 25. The Philosophy of Composition, by Edgar Allan Poe 26. Preface to Leaves of Grass, first edition (1855, excerpt), by Walt Whitman 27. The Study of Poetry, by Matthew Arnold 28. Poems, by Emily Dickinson 29. "Proofs of Holy Writ", by Rudyard Kipling 30. A Retrospect, by Ezra Pound 31. The Possibility of a Poetic Drama, by T. S. Eliot 32. Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality, by Laura (Riding) Jackson

Promotional Information

The first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Spanning thousands of years and including some of the most influential critical essays ever written, this is a collection of influential writings on poetry ranging from Aristotle to Laura (Riding) Jackson.

About the Author

Poet, critic, and anthologist, William Harmon is the James Gordon Hanes Professor in the Humanities (English and Comparative Literature) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, The Top 500 Poems, and The Classic Hundred Poems, all published by Columbia, as well as The Oxford Book of American Light Verse.

Reviews

Harmon presents a fine collection in the study of poetics-i.e., the study of what poetry is, and should be-from classical antiquity into the early 20th century... Recommended. Choice