Product Description

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is a comprehensive reference work dealing with all aspects of its subject: history, types, movements, prosody, and critical terminology. Prepared by recognized authorities, its articles treat their topics in sufficient depth and with enough lucidity to satisfy the scholar and the general reader alike. Entries vary in length from relatively brief notices to substantial articles of about 20,000 words.

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, published in 1965, established itself book as a standard in the field. Among the 215 contributors were Northrop Frye writing on allegory, Murray Krieger on belief in poetry, Philip Wheelwright on myth, John Hollander on music, and William Carlos Williams on free verse. In 1974, the Enlarged Edition increased the entries with dozens of new subjects, including rock lyric, computer poetry, and black poetry, to name just a few.

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics accounts for the extraordinary change and explosion of knowledge within literary and cultural studies since the 1970s. This edition, completely revised, preserves what was most valuable from previous editions, while subjecting each existing entry to revision. Over 90 percent of the entries have been extensively revised and most major ones entirely rewritten. Completely new entries number 162, including those by new contributors Camille Paglia, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Elaine Showalter, Houston Baker, Andrew Ross, and many more. New entries include those on cultural criticism, discourse, feminist poetics, and Chicano poetry.

Improvements cover several areas: All the recent developments in theory that bear on poetry are included; bibliographies of secondary sources are ex-tended; cross-references among entries and through blind entries have been expanded for greater ease of use; and coverage of emergent and non-Western poetries is dramatically increased. Indeed, a hallmark of the encyclopedia is its world-wide orientation on the poetry of national and cultural groups.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45807 in Books
• Published on: 1993-04-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1434 pages

Review
An extraordinarily helpful volume that will save untold hours of reference time for the student, the general reader, and the literary scholar.
(The Modern Language Journal )

A reference work of distinction which all who work in the field of literary studies will find extremely useful if not, indeed, indispensable.
(Classical Journal )

I consider this volume nearly as essential for any working poet as a good dictionary.
(Judson Jerome, Writer's Digest )

A work of scholarship, much humour and literary value.
(The Times Literary Supplement )

No handier one-volume compendium is now available to provide so much useful, authoritative material on the history, theory, and craft of imaginative writing.
(Books Abroad )

Customer Reviews

An absolute must
There is no way to simplify an inherently complex issue like literary theory, but if it is humanly possible at all to present the essence in a consice and readable manner, this is achieved by this remarkable volume. The book comes complete with up-to-date exposition of literary theoretical terms, summaries of national literatures and major theoretical trends, and short bibliographies. The contributors are all top-notch and the writing avoids the mystification one usually comes across in this kind of discourses. Given the magnificently affordable price, too, this book should be in the library of everybody interested.