Inhoudsopgave:
|
âThe next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridgeâs cottage,â William Hazlitt recalled, âHe answered in some degree to his friendâs description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote- like . . . there was a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth.â Hazlitt presents a Wordsworth who differs from the one we knowâand, as Matthew Bevis argues in his radical new reading of the poet, this Wordsworth owed his quixotic creativity to a profound feeling for comedy. Wordsworthâs Fun explores the writerâs debts to the ludic and the ludicrous in classical tradition; his reworkings of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Cervantes; his engagement with forms of English poetic humor; and his love of comic prose. Combining close reading with cultural analysis, Bevis travels many untrodden ways, studying Wordsworthâs interest in laughing gas, pantomime, the figure of the fool, and the value of play. Intrepid, immersive, and entertaining, Wordsworthâs Fun sheds fresh light on how one poetâs strange humor helped to shape modern literary experiment. Â Â |
nl
en