The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart
Title | The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart PDF eBook |
Author | Christopher Smart |
Publisher | SIU Press |
Total Pages | 230 |
Release | 1991 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 9780809316090 |
The only collection of all known letters of Christopher Smart provides the best psychological explanation to date of that complex and elusive eighteenth-century poet. The significant characteristics that distinguish Smart’s prose letters from his poetry, Betty Rizzo and Robert Mahony note, are that his letters were requests for assistance while his verses were bequests, gifts in which he set great store. Indeed, it was Smart’s lifelong conviction that he was a poet of major importance. As Smart biographer Karina Williamson notes, "The splendidly informative and vivaciously written accounts of the circumstances surrounding each letter, or group of letters, add up to what is in effect a miniature biography."
Christopher Smart
Title | Christopher Smart PDF eBook |
Author | Chris Mounsey |
Publisher | Bucknell University Press |
Total Pages | 356 |
Release | 2001 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 9780838754832 |
"This new biography of Christopher Smart offers a picture of a multifaceted eighteenth-century wit whose writing has far-reaching social, political, and historical significance. Poet, journalist, theater performer, cross-dresser, and theologian, who was questionably incarcerated for insanity, wherever Smart found himself his approach to life was at once serious and joyful, confirming him as one of God's clowns." "Building on previous biographical, bibliographical, and critical work - as well as on a broad scholarship on the publishing trade, on Grub Street and the position of the professional writer, and on the institutional treatment of madness in eighteenth-century England - Chris Mounsey constructs a version of Smart's life that is radically original. In its intelligent use of legal, parliamentary, and other archives, Mounsey both reappraises the familiar source material and mounts a challenge to earlier accounts of Smart's life and career. New interpretations of Smart's relationship with others (including his father-in-law John Newbery), his life on Grub Street as a political satirist, and his involvement in theological speculations provide a fuller and more engaging picture of the social, political, scientific, and religious context of his life and work."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Letter from Christopher Smart to T[homas] Cannan
Title | Letter from Christopher Smart to T[homas] Cannan PDF eBook |
Author | Christopher Smart |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | |
Release | 1769 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century
Title | Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century PDF eBook |
Author | Min Wild |
Publisher | Bucknell University Press |
Total Pages | 275 |
Release | 2013-09-05 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1611485207 |
Front Flap: Poet, essayist, actor, hymn-writer, wit, magazine editor, transvestite stage performer: Christopher Smart, Georgian don-turned-writer, was all of these. He was, and remains, a mercurial individual, an idiosyncratic yet strangely familiar writer of spiritual heights and material depths. His paradoxical exuberance fascinates scholars of eighteenth-century culture, and this collection of essays, a snapshot of current scholarship from both new and established Smart scholars, offers, among others, literary, theological, dramatic and philosophical perspectives on his writing. Here are new ways of reading familiar Smart works — including the astonishing, devout poem of his incarceration, Jubilate Agno — and unfamiliar ones, such as his translations and writing for children. Unexpected readers of Smart, from Coleridge to a testy anonymous annotator, are examined, and Smart's sacred translations and profane stage presence each find a place. Tom Keymer's re-evaluating afterword finds the quality of “betweenness” in Smart's work: between eras, between genres, between forms, Smart's vitality demands reassessment for each new generation of readers. Contributors: Karina Williamson, Min Wild, Rosalind Powell, Fraser Easton, Clement Hawes, William E. Levine, Noel Chevalier, Lori A. Branch, Daniel J. Ennis, Chris Mounsey, Debbie Welham, Tom Keymer. Back Flap: The editors Min Wild's monograph Christopher Smartand Satire on Smart's Midwife, was published in 2008, and various articles and reviews of a Smartian bent have followed. Her interest in that eighteenth-century favorite, the literary mode of prosopopoeia, has led her to investigate the personification of words, texts and literary modes themselves. She lectures in eighteenth-century literature and theory at Plymouth University, UK, and reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. Noel Chevalier is Associate Professor of English at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. He has published articles on Jubilate Agno and on Smart’s challenge to “legitimate” playhouses in Mrs. Midnight’sOratory. Although his specialty lies in the eighteenth century, his teaching and research cover a diverse range of topics, from literary responses to the Bible, to the roots of globalization, to literary representations of science and scientists. He has helped create two interdisciplinary programs at Luther: one which addresses literature for students in the sciences, and one which explores the philosophical, political, economic, and cultural contexts of globalization. Jacket illustration: "Amaryllis sarniensis or Guernsey Amaryllis," from William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-GardenDisplayed, Vol. IX. No. 294. London, 1795.
Christopher Smart and Satire
Title | Christopher Smart and Satire PDF eBook |
Author | Min Wild |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 265 |
Release | 2016-05-23 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1317166418 |
Christopher Smart and Satire explores the lively and idiosyncratic world of satire in the eighteenth-century periodical, focusing on the way that writers adopted personae to engage with debates taking place during the British Enlightenment. Taking Christopher Smart's audacious and hitherto underexplored Midwife, or Old Woman's Magazine (1750-1753) as her primary source, Min Wild provides a rich examination of the prizewinning Cambridge poet's adoption of the bizarre, sardonic 'Mary Midnight' as his alter-ego. Her analysis provides insights into the difficult position in which eighteenth-century writers were placed, as ideas regarding the nature and functions of authorship were gradually being transformed. At the same time, Wild also demonstrates that Smart's use of 'Mary Midnight' is part of a tradition of learned wit, having an established history and characterized by identifiable satirical and rhetorical techniques. Wild's engagement with her exuberant source materials establishes the skill and ingenuity of Smart's often undervalued, multilayered prose satire. As she explores Smart's use of a peculiarly female voice, Wild offers us a picture of an ingenious and ribald wit whose satirical overview of society explores, overturns, and anatomises questions of gender, politics, and scientific and literary endeavors.
Letter from Christopher Smart to [Robert] Dodsley
Title | Letter from Christopher Smart to [Robert] Dodsley PDF eBook |
Author | Christopher Smart |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | |
Release | 1748 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Christopher Smart
Title | Christopher Smart PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Mahony |
Publisher | Scholarly Title |
Total Pages | 720 |
Release | 1984 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN |