Veronica Forrest-Thomson [electronic resource] : Poet on the Periphery /
Farmer, Gareth.author.
This study offers a comprehensive examination of the work of the young poet and scholar, Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) in the context of a literary-critical revolution of the late sixties and seventies and evaluates her work against contemporary debates in poetry and poetics. Gareth Farmer explores Forrest-Thomson’s relationship to the conflicting models of literary criticism in the twentieth century such as the close-reading models of F.R Leavis and William Empson, postructuralist models, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Written by the leading scholar on Forrest-Thomson’s work, this study explores Forrest-Thomson’s published work as well as unpublished materials from the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive. Drawing on close readings of Forrest-Thomson’s writings, this study argues that her work enables us reevaluate literary-critical history and suggests new paradigms for the literary aesthetics and poetics of the future.
Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
1 Introduction – Poet on the Periphery -- 2 The Reluctant Radical: Identi-kit and Uncollected Early Poems -- 3 Cambridge, Verbal Hiccups and Iambics: twelve academic questions and Language-Games -- 4 Poetic Artifice and the Defence of Form -- 5 Simplicity and Complexity in the Quest for Style -- 6 Control and Excess in the Quest for ‘Writing Straight’ -- 7 Coda – The Risks of ‘freedom, truth and skill’.
This study offers a comprehensive examination of the work of the young poet and scholar, Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) in the context of a literary-critical revolution of the late sixties and seventies and evaluates her work against contemporary debates in poetry and poetics. Gareth Farmer explores Forrest-Thomson’s relationship to the conflicting models of literary criticism in the twentieth century such as the close-reading models of F.R Leavis and William Empson, postructuralist models, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Written by the leading scholar on Forrest-Thomson’s work, this study explores Forrest-Thomson’s published work as well as unpublished materials from the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive. Drawing on close readings of Forrest-Thomson’s writings, this study argues that her work enables us reevaluate literary-critical history and suggests new paradigms for the literary aesthetics and poetics of the future.
Poetry.
Literature, Modern-20th century.
British literature.
Poetry and Poetics.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Contemporary Literature.
British and Irish Literature.