English Lyric Poetry

English Lyric Poetry is the first comprehensive reassessment of lyric poetry of the early seventeenth century. The study is directed at both beginning and more advanced students of literature, and responds to more specialised scholarly inquiries pursued of late in relation to specific poets. Jonathan Post seeks to assimilate many of the post-New Critical theoretical concerns with readings of the major and minor, male and female, authors of the period. Donne, Jonson, the Spenserians, Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Vaughan, as well as many non-canonical and women poets, all receive sustained, fresh, detailed analysis. In widening the scope of critical commentary, this extremely lucid and elegantly written book avoids the limitations of much recent criticism.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.