Awards

• Winner of Joint Winner of the 2018 First Book Award, Classical Association of the Midwest and South.

Overview

This volume is a major, ground-breaking study of the modernist E. E. Cummings' engagement with the classics. With his experimental form and syntax, his irreverence, and his rejection of the highbrow, there are probably few current readers who would name Cummings if asked to identify 20th-century Anglophone poets in the Classical tradition. But for most of his life, and even for ten or twenty years after his death, this is how many readers and critics did see Cummings. He specialised in the study of classical literature as an undergraduate at Harvard, and his contemporaries saw him as a 'pagan' poet or a 'Juvenalian' satirist, with an Aristophanic sense of humour. In E.E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics, Alison Rosenblitt aims to recover for the contemporary reader this lost understanding of Cummings as a classicizing poet. The book also includes an edition of previously unpublished work by Cummings himself, unearthed from archival research. For the first time, the reader has access to the full scope of Cummings' translations from Horace, Homer, and Greek drama, as well as two short pieces of classically-related prose, a short 'Alcaics' and a previously unknown and classicizing parody of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. This new work is exciting in its own right and essential to understanding Cummings' development as a poet.

Full Product Details

Author:   J. Alison Rosenblitt (Lecturer, Lecturer, Balliol College and Regent's Park College, University of Oxford)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.60cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 22.20cm
Weight:   0.584kg
ISBN:  

9780198767152

ISBN 10:   0198767153
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   29 September 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

List of figures Abbreviations Foreword E. E. Cummings as a Classical Poet 1: Preface 2: Cummings and the Classics 3: 'smoking centuries of hecatombs': Cummings and translation Childhood, Harvard, and Paganism 4: The Pagan World of Goat-footed Pan 5: Classics and Childhood: Protectors and Transgressors The Great War and Beyond 6: 'a twilight smelling of Vergil': Cummings, Classics, and the Great War 7: 'let not thy lust one threaded moment lose': Death in the Meadow 8: 'cast like Euridyce one brief look behind': The Post-war World Cummings, Classics, and Modernism 9: Modernity and Antiquity: 'smite the sounding bollox' 10: A Homeric Affair: Reflections on the Ambitions of Modernism Afterword Translations, Further Verse, and Prose by E. E. Cummings Translations from Horace's Odes Translations from Sophocles Translations from Euripides Translation from Aeschylus Translations from the Odyssey Translation exercise from Euripides' Hecuba Further Verse Prose Editing the Unpublished Work Appendix: Cummings' classical education and personal library

Reviews

I come away from this volume greatly impressed by Cummings whose novelty shines through all the more brightly, knowing it is grounded so firmly in classroom exercises and a deep and lifelong engagement with the past. I also come away from this study impressed with Rosenblitt's scholarship and the serious attention that she gives to an author she clearly loves. * David Farley, Classical Review * this is a rich trove of analyses and details about the connections between Cummings and the classics that will engage and excite readers interested in the poet and his world. * Adam Lecznar, Classics for All * an indispensable guide ... Rosenblitt brings to her subject an encyclopaedic understanding of all the conflicting traces of his life - not just his published poetry and prose, but also his juvenilia, artwork, translations, correspondence, drafts, unpublished work, and book ownership. On this basis she corrects, deftly but politely, her peers' misreadings and factual errors, and also enhances her insightful close readings of the key poems ... invaluable to any serious reader of Cummings. * A.M. Juster, Claremont Review of Books * refreshing and unexpected take on receptions of the past * Joanna Paul, Greece & Rome * She has done what advertising copy so often, and so often dubiously, claims: she has broken fresh ground. Her book is an achievement not just for what it reveals, clarifies, and settles, but for the thousand leads and openings it offers to all the scholars who will follow her. * John Talbot, Translation and Literature * This book offers a complete investigation on Cummings's relationship with the Greek and Roman classics, exploring both Cummings's biography and his work. * Guido Milanese,Rassegna Di Tradizione Della Cultura Classica *

The extent of the bibliography is really impressive. Rosenblitt offers a rich discussion of Cummings and his poetry, and the influence of Classics on both. Overall, it is a fine and interesting book. * Ruth Breindel, New England Classical Journal * J. Alison Rosenblitt's new volume on E.E. Cummings achieves no less than a redefinition of our understanding of the poet's literary output. * Zénó Vernyik, Modern Language Review * ... this is a deeply impressive book - closely argued, thoughtful, and compelling. Classical reception scholars and students of Modernist poetry alike will be indebted to Rosenblitt for shedding new light on the rich web of influences that made Cummings the innovator he was. * Thomas R. Keith, CJ-Online * This book offers a complete investigation on Cummings's relationship with the Greek and Roman classics, exploring both Cummings's biography and his work. * Guido Milanese,Rassegna Di Tradizione Della Cultura Classica * She has done what advertising copy so often, and so often dubiously, claims: she has broken fresh ground. Her book is an achievement not just for what it reveals, clarifies, and settles, but for the thousand leads and openings it offers to all the scholars who will follow her. * John Talbot, Translation and Literature * refreshing and unexpected take on receptions of the past * Joanna Paul, Greece & Rome * an indispensable guide ... Rosenblitt brings to her subject an encyclopaedic understanding of all the conflicting traces of his life -- not just his published poetry and prose, but also his juvenilia, artwork, translations, correspondence, drafts, unpublished work, and book ownership. On this basis she corrects, deftly but politely, her peers' misreadings and factual errors, and also enhances her insightful close readings of the key poems ... invaluable to any serious reader of Cummings. * A.M. Juster, Claremont Review of Books * this is a rich trove of analyses and details about the connections between Cummings and the classics that will engage and excite readers interested in the poet and his world. * Adam Lecznar, Classics for All * I come away from this volume greatly impressed by Cummings whose novelty shines through all the more brightly, knowing it is grounded so firmly in classroom exercises and a deep and lifelong engagement with the past. I also come away from this study impressed with Rosenblitt's scholarship and the serious attention that she gives to an author she clearly loves. * David Farley, Classical Review *

an indispensable guide ... Rosenblitt brings to her subject an encyclopedic understanding of all the conflicting traces of his life - not just his published poetry and prose, but also his juvenilia, artwork, translations, correspondence, drafts, unpublished work, and book ownership. On this basis she corrects, deftly but politely, her peers' misreadings and factual errors, and also enhances her insightful close readings of the key poems ... invaluable to any serious reader of Cummings. A.M. Juster, Claremont Review of Books

I come away from this volume greatly impressed by Cummings whose novelty shines through all the more brightly, knowing it is grounded so firmly in classroom exercises and a deep and lifelong engagement with the past. I also come away from this study impressed with Rosenblitt's scholarship and the serious attention that she gives to an author she clearly loves. * David Farley, Classical Review * this is a rich trove of analyses and details about the connections between Cummings and the classics that will engage and excite readers interested in the poet and his world. * Adam Lecznar, Classics for All * an indispensable guide ... Rosenblitt brings to her subject an encyclopaedic understanding of all the conflicting traces of his life - not just his published poetry and prose, but also his juvenilia, artwork, translations, correspondence, drafts, unpublished work, and book ownership. On this basis she corrects, deftly but politely, her peers' misreadings and factual errors, and also enhances her insightful close readings of the key poems ... invaluable to any serious reader of Cummings. * A.M. Juster, Claremont Review of Books * refreshing and unexpected take on receptions of the past * Joanna Paul, Greece & Rome * She has done what advertising copy so often, and so often dubiously, claims: she has broken fresh ground. Her book is an achievement not just for what it reveals, clari?es, and settles, but for the thousand leads and openings it offers to all the scholars who will follow her. * John Talbot, Translation and Literature *

Author Information

J. Alison Rosenblitt trained as an ancient historian and has published both in the field of Roman history and in the field of classical reception. As an historian, she studies ancient historiography (especially Sallust), late republican political history, and Roman oratory. On the classical reception side, she is interested in the poetry of the Great War and in early modernism and its relationship to the classics. She specializes in E.E. Cummings, whose relationship to the classical past is provocative and disobedient. Dr Rosenblitt took a double first in Ancient and Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, with academic prizes, and completed her D.Phil. at Balliol College, Oxford. She has been a lecturer at various Oxford colleges and was a Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.

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