About this product

PublisherFaber & Faber

ISBN-139780571093434

eBay Product ID (ePID)16046562519

Book TitleVerse: a Selection

FormatHardcover

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1972

AuthorSamuel Taylor Coleridge

Number of Pages256 Pages

Item Height220mm

Item Width140mm

Title_AuthorSamuel Taylor Coleridge

Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom

Ratings and reviews

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Compelling content

by robbre_94
09 Jun, 2025
Empson's penetration is outstanding.
William Empson's long introductory essay, as is generally the case for his work, is packed with original insights. His work is intellectually invigorating in examining of STC's "intentions" across rewritings. Empson is brusquely dismissive of Wimsatt's 'intentional fallacy', at the time a critical orthodoxy. He inderstood STC to have been excited by an occult idea of active daemonic spirits, whilst hedged in by Wordsworth's pantheism (his "new religion") and Christian orthodoxyas Coleridge's Unitarianism collapsed. Whatever one thinks of this view, Empson is always a critic who just opens things up in a text. His collaborator, David Pirie provides useful notes on each of the selected poems. This should be read alongside selections by John Beer (Everyman 1974) , Richard Holmes (Penguin 1996) and H.J. Jackson (Oxford 1994). These are all useful works, but Empson's penetration is compelling.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned