Ivan Turgenev: Self-exile and fame of Ivan Turgenev: His last major work, Poems in Prose, is remarkable chiefly for its wistfulness and for its famous eulogy to the Russian language.

William Soutar: In Poems in Scots (1935) he developed the ballad style toward the objective expression of individual lyricism. During his last 10 years his principal output in Scots consisted of “whigmaleeries,” humorous poems full of comic exaggeration, interweaving the fantastic and the familiar. He was fond of…

children’s literature: Peaks and plateaus (1865–1940): …expressed itself in the idyllic Poems of Childhood (1896), by Eugene Field, and the rural dialect Rhymes of Childhood (1891), by James Whitcomb Riley. These poems can hardly speak to the children of the second half of the 20th century. But it is not clear that the same is true…

Italian literature: Opposing movements: The Poems of Leopardi), first published in 1831. Some were patriotic and were once very popular; but the most memorable came from deeper lyrical inspiration. Among them were “L’infinito,” a meditation on infinity; “A Silvia,” on the memory of a girl who died when he…

Octavio Paz: The Poems of Octavio Paz (2012) was a career-spanning collection of his poems in English translation.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: …another publisher in 1883 as Poems of Passion, a titillating title that was as racy as any of the contents. The sale of 60,000 copies in two years firmly established Wheeler’s reputation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Napoleonic period (1805–16) of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems of the East and West). Goethe was fleeing from the upheavals of his own time. But in 1816 he was cruelly reminded that he could not flee present reality entirely. His wife died in June, probably of epilepsy. He abandoned a third visit to…

Thomas Hardy: Poetry: Poems of the Past and the Present (1901) contained nearly twice as many poems as its predecessor, most of them newly written. Some of the poems are explicitly or implicitly grouped by subject or theme. There are, for example, 11 “War Poems” prompted by the…

Laurence Minot: …Joseph Ritson in 1795 as Poems on Interesting Events in the Reign of King Edward III. Minot’s poems were evidently written contemporaneously with the events they describe; the first celebrates the English triumph over the Scots at Halidon Hill (1333) and the last the capture of the French fiefdom Guines…

Frances E.W. Harper: …frequently from her second book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), which was quite successful and was several times enlarged and reissued. It addressed the subjects of motherhood, separation, and death and contained the antislavery poem “Bury Me in a Free Land.” Generally written in conventional rhymed quatrains, her poetry was…

English literature: The court wits: The posthumous Poems on Several Occasions (1689) includes deft poetry of friendship and love written with the familiar, colloquial ease of the Cavalier tradition and carefully observed, idiosyncratically executed descriptions of nature. He also added a second part to his friend Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler in…

Michael Bruce: Logan edited in 1770 Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce, in which “Ode to the Cuckoo” appeared. In the preface he stated that “to make up a miscellany, some poems written by different authors are inserted.” In a collection of his own poems in 1781, Logan printed an…

African American literature: Antebellum literature: enslaved in Boston, dedicated her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first published African American book, to proving that “Negros, Black as Cain,” were not inherently inferior to whites in matters of the spirit and thus could “join th’ angelic train” as spiritual equals to whites. Composing…

Les Murray: …National Gallery of Australia, and Poems the Size of Photographs, a collection of short-form verse. His 2010 collection, Taller When Prone, celebrates ordinary Australians, often with a healthy dose of humour. The poems in Waiting for the Past (2015) hearken back to Murray’s rural upbringing and ponder the peculiarities of…

Robert Burns: Development as a poet: It was entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and appeared on July 31, 1786. Its success was immediate and overwhelming. Simple country folk and sophisticated Edinburgh critics alike hailed it, and the upshot was that Burns set out for Edinburgh on November 27, 1786, to be lionized,…

Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, collection of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1830. Many of the poems contain experimental elements such as irregular metres and words employed for their musical or evocative powers rather than for their strict meanings. The collection includes the introspective

North & South, collection of poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, published in 1955. The book, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1956, was a revision of an earlier collection, North & South (1946), to which 17 poems were added. Both collections capture the divided nature of Bishop’s allegiances: born in

Argeș: The 15th-century fortress of Poenari was constructed, overlooking the Argeș River valley, by Vlad III (Vlad Țepeș, or Vlad the Impaler), a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement, who may have been the prototype for Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel (1897). The fortress has a stairway…

radioactivity: Heavy-ion radioactivity: Sandulescu, D.N. Poenaru, and W. Greiner described calculations indicating the possibility of a new type of decay of heavy nuclei intermediate between alpha decay and spontaneous fission. The first observation of heavy-ion radioactivity was that of a 30-MeV, carbon-14 emission from radium-223 by H.J. Rose and…

annelid: Annotated classification: Order Poeobiida Body saclike without external segmentation; anterior end with circle of tentacles; 2 internal septa only polychaete characteristics; pelagic; single genus, Poeobius. Class Oligochaeta Primarily freshwater or terrestrial with setae arising directly from body wall; name of group refers to the few

annelid: Annotated classification: …polychaete characteristics; pelagic; single genus, Poeobius. Class Oligochaeta Primarily freshwater or terrestrial with setae arising directly from body wall; name of group refers to the few setae per segment; head and body appendages generally lacking; hermaphroditic, with testes located anteriorly to ovaries; gonoduct system complex; seminal receptacle used to store…

grass finch: …the most colourful is the Gouldian finch (Chloebia, formerly Poephila, gouldiae) whose plumage is purple, gold, green, blue, and black; its face may be red, orange, or black. The star finch (Neochmia ruficauda) is greenish brown above and yellow below, with white-dotted red head, greenish gray breast, and white-barred red…

animal social behaviour: The proximate mechanisms of social behaviour: The song of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) illustrates the hormonal influences on song development and singing behaviour. After the birds hatch, male and female brains develop differently. Injecting females with estrogen early in development causes them to develop malelike brains, but they will not sing male song unless…

Alessandro Poerio was an Italian liberal during the Risorgimento, brother of Carlo Poerio. The son of Baron Giuseppe Poerio, a Neapolitan lawyer well known for his own liberal sympathies, Alessandro was taken into exile by his father on the Bourbon restoration in Naples in 1815. He returned to

Carlo Poerio was an Italian revolutionary, distinguished for his services to liberalism during the Risorgimento. The son of the Neapolitan lawyer and liberal Baron Giuseppe Poerio and the brother of the poet and soldier Alessandro Poerio, Carlo shared in the exiles of his family from Naples by the

Italian literature: Literary trends before World War I: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, editor of Poesia, a fashionable cosmopolitan review. Both Crepuscolari and Futuristi were part of a complex European tradition of disillusionment and revolt, the former inheriting the sophisticated pessimism of French and Flemish Decadents, the latter a fundamental episode in the history of the western European avant-garde as…

Brazilian literature: Poetry: The term poesia marginal (“marginal poetry”) embraces noncommercial networks of poetry and represents diverse practices that are marginal in their unconventional production and distribution, in their “uncultured” forms, and in their opposition to the repressive military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. During this period,…

Rosario Castellanos: , The Selected Poems, by Magda Bogin), a polemical allusion to a well-known verse by Spanish Romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, in which he tells his beloved that she is poetry.

Alejandro Jodorowsky: Later films, comic books, and psychomagic: …movie, Poesía sin fin (2016; Endless Poetry), was also autobiographical, chronicling Jodorowsky as a young man.

Spanish literature: Poetry: Leaders of postwar poesía social (social poetry) are sometimes referred to as a “Basque triumvirate”: Gabriel Celaya, a prewar Surrealist who became a leading spokesman for the opposition to Franco; Blas de Otero, an existentialist writing in the vein of Antonio Machado’s Campos de Castilla; and Ángela Figuera,…

Luis Palés Matos: The collection Poesía, 1915–56 (1957) reveals his more personal side as a lyric poet and as a melancholy man, ill at ease in the modern world.

Alberto Lista: His Poesías (1822, 1837; “Poems”) show faint influences of the Romantic movement. Among his best-known works are El imperio de la estupidez (1798; “The Empire of Stupidity”), a critical work in the manner of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad; Ensayos literarios y críticos (1844; “Literary and Critical Essays”);…

Esteban Manuel de Villegas: …an early book of poems, Poesías eróticas y amatorias (1617–18).

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda: …1841 into a volume entitled Poesías líricas (“Lyrical Poems”). Combining the classical style of Manuel José Quintana with her own romantic vision, tinged with a pessimism born of much personal suffering, these poems rank among the most poignant in all Spanish literature. Her plays, distinctive for their poetic diction and…

Ippolito Pindemonte: … (1779), and one of lyrics, Poesie campestri (1788; “Rural Poetry”). Both showed a sensitivity to nature and the influence of the contemporary English poets Thomas Gray and Edward Young. A stay in Paris inspired the poem “La Francia” (1789) and a prose satire on political conditions in Europe, Abaritte (1790).…

Melchiorre Cesarotti: …of the Ossian poems (Poesie di Ossian, 1763–72; modern ed., 1924) revived interest in nature poetry. Two important essays also encouraged would-be Romantic writers: Saggio sulla filosofia del gusto (1785; “Essay on the Philosophy of Taste”) and Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue (1785; “Essay on the Philosophy of Languages”),…

Louise-Victorine Ackermann: …real reputation rests on the Poésies, premières poésies, poésies philosophiques (1874; “Poetry, First Poetry, Philosophical Poetry”), a volume of sombre and powerful verse, expressing her revolt against human suffering.

poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Poet and Dancer (1993) is the story of a destructive friendship between two women living in New York City.

Jim Dine: He also illustrated Guillaume Apollinaire’s The Poet Assassinated (1968) and Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (1976). Dine was the subject of several short films by his wife, including Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walls (1995), which was nominated for an Academy Award. Major retrospectives of Dine’s work were…

Federico García Lorca: Later poetry and plays of Federico García Lorca: …en Nueva York (published 1940; Poet in New York), a series of poems whose dense, at times hallucinatory images, free-verse lines, and thematic preoccupation with urban decay and social injustice mark an audacious departure from Lorca’s previous work. The collection is redolent of Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot,…

poet laureate, title first granted in England in the 17th century for poetic excellence. Its holder is a salaried member of the British royal household, but the post no longer has specific poetic duties. A similar position was created in the United States in 1936, and many other countries appoint a

Helen Archibald Clarke and Charlotte Endymion Porter: …Porter launched a new monthly, Poet Lore, “devoted to Shakespeare, Browning, and the Comparative Study of Literature.” The magazine found an immediate and growing audience among the proliferating literary clubs and societies across the nation, most if not all of them sharing the Victorian literary standards and interests of the…

Antônio de Castro Alves was a Romantic poet whose sympathy for the Brazilian abolitionist cause won him the name “poet of the slaves.” While still a student Castro Alves produced a play that brought him to the attention of José de Alencar and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazilian literary

Dragon Boat Festival, prominent and festive Chinese holiday that originated at least 1,500 years ago and features dragon boat races and rice dumplings. It is one of the three “festivals of the living,” along with the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Known as Duanwu Jie in Mandarin and

jasmine: Major species: Common jasmine, or poet’s jasmine (Jasminum officinale), native to Iran, produces fragrant white flowers that are the source of attar of jasmine used in perfumery. It is widely cultivated for its shining leaves and clusters of flowers that bloom in summer. Winter jasmine (J. nudiflorum),…

narcissus: Major species: jonquilla), and poet’s narcissus (N. poeticus). An oil from jonquil flowers is used in perfumes.

Rita Dove: … (1992); a collection of essays, The Poet’s World (1995); and a verse play, The Darker Face of the Earth (published 1994).

Federico García Lorca: Later poetry and plays of Federico García Lorca: …en Nueva York (published 1940; Poet in New York), a series of poems whose dense, at times hallucinatory images, free-verse lines, and thematic preoccupation with urban decay and social injustice mark an audacious departure from Lorca’s previous work. The collection is redolent of Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot,…

Ben Jonson: Theatrical career: 1600) and Poetaster (1601). Even in these, however, there is the paradox of contempt for human behaviour hand in hand with a longing for human order.

poète maudit, (French: “accursed poet”), in literary criticism, the poet as an outcast of modern society, despised by its rulers who fear his penetrating insights into their spiritual emptiness. The phrase was first applied by Paul Verlaine in Les Poètes maudits (1884), a collection of critical and

Stéphane Mallarmé: …the series of articles entitled Les Poètes maudits (“The Accursed Poets”) published by Verlaine in 1883 and the praise lavished on him by J.-K. Huysmans in his novel À rebours (“The Wrong Way”) in 1884 led to his wide recognition as the most eminent French poet of the day. A…

Italian literature: Poetry after World War II: …standard anthology of 20th-century poetry, Poeti italiani del Novecento (1978; “Italian Poets of the 20th Century”).

Italian literature: Poetry after World War II: …of contemporary literature Stefano Giovanardi, Poeti italiani del secondo Novecento, 1945–1995 (1996; “Italian Poets of the Second Half of the 20th Century, 1945–1995”), introduced a useful taxonomy. Cucchi and Giovanardi recognized that, in talking about the new poetry, they had to take into account the older, established poets who continued…

poetic diction, grandiose, elevated, and unfamiliar language, supposedly the prerogative of poetry but not of prose. The earliest critical reference to poetic diction is Aristotle’s remark in the Poetics that it should be clear without being “mean.” But subsequent generations of poets were more

Codex Regius: …designated by scholars as the Poetic Edda, or Elder Edda (see Edda). It is the oldest such collection, the best-known of all Icelandic books, and an Icelandic national treasure.

poetic imagery, the sensory and figurative language used in poetry. The object or experience that a poet is contemplating is usually perceived by that poet in a relationship to some second object or event, person, or thing. The poet may be thought to transfer from this second object certain

poetic justice, in literature, an outcome in which vice is punished and virtue rewarded, usually in a manner peculiarly or ironically appropriate. The term was coined by the English literary critic Thomas Rymer in the 17th century, when it was believed that a work of literature should uphold moral

John Singleton: His next film, Poetic Justice (1993), starred Jackson’s sister, singer Janet Jackson. Singleton’s other films included Higher Learning (1995), a drama investigating a variety of social issues as it follows the lives of three college freshmen (1993); Rosewood (1997), based on a true story of racial violence in…

poetic license, the right assumed by poets to alter or invert standard syntax or depart from common diction or pronunciation to comply with the metrical or tonal requirements of their writing. As a general rule, poetry has a carefully controlled verbal structure. The metre of the poem, the pattern

Danish literature: Poetic Realism: New elements of reason and realism appeared after the first quarter of the century in the works of Poul Møller, who wrote the first Danish novel on contemporary life, En dansk students eventyr (1824; “The Adventures of a Danish Student”), as well as…

Lazare Meerson: …of the development of French poetic realism, a complete break from the expressionism and impressionism popular at the time.

rhythm, in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated by the ear and the mind, having as it does a physiological basis. It is universally agreed to

Joseph Cornell: …(Soap Bubble Set), his first shadow box of the type for which he became best known. Cornell’s shadow boxes—or “memory boxes” or “poetic theatres,” as he called them—took the form of glass-fronted boxes containing found objects and collaged elements arranged in enigmatic, often poetic, juxtaposition. Recurrent themes and motifs included…

dance: Thus, Aristotle’s statement in the Poetics that dance is rhythmic movement whose purpose is “to represent men’s characters as well as what they do and suffer” refers to the central role that dance played in classical Greek theatre, where the chorus through its movements reenacted the themes of the drama…

Lodovico Castelvetro: …the Poetics of Aristotle, called La poetica di Aristotele vulgarizzata (“Aristotle’s Poetics Popularized”), was published in 1570. Though often erroneous in transmitting Aristotle’s ideas, La poetica was extremely influential in the history of drama and of criticism. Castelvetro emphasized realism in drama, clarified the distinction between rhetoric and poetry, and…

Gian Giorgio Trissino: His La poetica (1529) used Italian poetry to exemplify his theory.

poetic justice, in literature, an outcome in which vice is punished and virtue rewarded, usually in a manner peculiarly or ironically appropriate. The term was coined by the English literary critic Thomas Rymer in the 17th century, when it was believed that a work of literature should uphold moral

Alphonse de Lamartine: Early life and Méditations poétiques: …his first collection of poetry, Méditations poétiques, which became immensely successful because of its new romantic tone and sincerity of feeling. It brought to French poetry a new music; the themes were at the same time intimate and religious. If the vocabulary remained that of the somewhat faded rhetoric of…

William Congreve: Legacy of William Congreve: …was praised in Giles Jacob’s Poetical Register (1719), where he is described as being “so far from being puff’d up with Vanity…that he abounds with Humility and good Nature. He does not shew so much the Poet as the Gentleman.” The last phrase will serve as a comment on the…

William Blake: Blake as a poet: …volume of 70 pages titled Poetical Sketches, with the attribution on the title page reading simply, “By W.B.” It contained an “advertisement” by Reverend Mathew that stated, “Conscious of the irregularities and defects to be found in almost every page, his friends have still believed that they possessed a poetic…

prosody: Quantitative metres: …on prosody, remarked in his Poetical Works (1912) that the difficulty of adapting English syllables to the Greek rules is “very great, and even deterrent.” Longfellow’s hexameter is in reality a syllable-stress line of five dactyls and a final trochee; syllabic quantity plays no part in determining the metre.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: … (1824); she also edited his Poetical Works (1839), with long and invaluable notes, and his prose works. Her Journal is a rich source of Shelley biography, and her letters are an indispensable adjunct.

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Zuhayr: Palmer, The Poetical Works of Behá-ed-Dín Zoheir of Egypt, 2 vol. (1876–77). Among his poems are qasida (odes) of praise to members of the Ayyūbid dynasty or to officials; other poems include those devoted to love found and lost and to friendship.

George Moses Horton: …of fears of punishment, The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, The Colored Bard of North Carolina (1845) addresses the issue of slavery in a subtle manner. His last and largest volume of verse is Naked Genius (1865).

Aleksandr Afanasev: …vozzreniya slavyan na prirodu (The Slav’s Poetical Views of Nature) in three volumes, which provided the first synthesis of the theories of the Mythological school, a 19th-century Romantic literary movement that drew its inspiration from folklore. The Mythological school was grounded in the aesthetic philosophy of F.W. von Schelling…

dance: Thus, Aristotle’s statement in the Poetics that dance is rhythmic movement whose purpose is “to represent men’s characters as well as what they do and suffer” refers to the central role that dance played in classical Greek theatre, where the chorus through its movements reenacted the themes of the drama…

Danish literature: Poetic Realism: New elements of reason and realism appeared after the first quarter of the century in the works of Poul Møller, who wrote the first Danish novel on contemporary life, En dansk students eventyr (1824; “The Adventures of a Danish Student”), as well as…

Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger: His Poetiske skrifter (1805; “Poetic Writings”) contains two long cycles of lyric poems and Aladdin, a poetic drama on the writer’s own life, with the lamp of the story symbolizing intuitive poetic genius. Oehlenschläger was by now recognized as an important Romantic poet and an able…

poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

Marianne Moore: …“The Labors of Hercules,” and “Poetry.” The last named is the source of her often-quoted admonition that poets should present imaginary gardens with real toads in them.

Poetry, American poetry magazine founded in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, who became its longtime editor. It became the principal organ for modern poetry of the English-speaking world and survived through World War II (1939–45) and into the 21st century. It is the world’s oldest monthly

aesthetics: Major concerns of 18th-century aesthetics: …is James Beattie’s Essay on Poetry and Music as They Affect the Mind (1776), in which the author rejects the view of music as a representational (imitative) art form and argues that expression is the true source of musical excellence. Another example is provided by Denis Diderot in his didactic…

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Last years (1817–32) of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: …fourth section of his autobiography Poetry and Truth, completing the story of his life up to his departure for Weimar in 1775; he compiled an account of his time in Rome in 1787–88, Zweiter Römischer Aufenthalt (1829; “Second Sojourn in Rome”); and above all he wrote part two of Faust,…

R.S. Thomas: …Thomas’s later volumes, starting with Poetry for Supper (1958), the subjects of his poetry remained the same, yet his questions became more specific, his irony more bitter, and his compassion deeper. In such later works as The Way of It (1977), Frequencies (1978), Between Here and Now (1981), and Later…

Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: …annual prize given by the Poetry Foundation—an independent literary organization and publisher—to an American poet for lifetime achievement. The prize, which comes with an award of $100,000, was established in 1986 by philanthropist Ruth Lilly. It is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the field of poetry and…

Ted Kooser: …the Bohemian Alps (2002) and The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005), a guidebook to writing poetry.

Bernard Patrick O’Dowd: …an important prose pamphlet “Poetry Militant” (1909), O’Dowd, a political and philosophical radical, argued that the poet should educate, propagandize, and indoctrinate. His later work included The Bush (1912), a long poem about the Australian nation; Alma Venus! and Other Verses (1921), social satire in verse; and The Poems:…

qawwali: Sufi Muslim poetry that aims to lead listeners to a state of religious ecstasy—to a spiritual union with Allah (God). The music was popularized outside of South Asia in the late 20th century, owing largely to its promotion by the world-music industry.

Muriel Spark: …Poetry Society and editor of The Poetry Review (1947–49). She later published a series of critical biographies of literary figures and editions of 19th-century letters, including Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1951; rev. ed., Mary Shelley, 1987), John Masefield (1953), and The Brontë Letters (1954). Spark…

slam poetry: …is performed at events called poetry slams, or simply slams. The name slam came from how the audience has the power to praise or, sometimes, destroy a poem and from the high-energy performance style of the poets.

fleshly school of poetry, a group of late 19th-century English poets associated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The term was invented by the Scottish author Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) and appeared as the title of a pseudonymous article in the Contemporary Review (October 1871) in which he

Poetry, American poetry magazine founded in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, who became its longtime editor. It became the principal organ for modern poetry of the English-speaking world and survived through World War II (1939–45) and into the 21st century. It is the world’s oldest monthly

International PEN, international organization of writers. The original PEN was founded in London in 1921 by the English novelist John Galsworthy, and it has since grown to include writers worldwide. The name PEN is an acronym standing for “poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, and novelists.”

The position of poet laureate of the United States is somewhat different from that of Britain, where the title was first established in the 17th century. Whereas the British office renders the laureate a salaried member of the British royal household, the American poet laureate acts as the chair of

John Bell: …issued the 109 volumes of The Poets of Great Britain complete from Chaucer to Churchill series. He influenced later publishing practice by introducing into his books illustrations prepared by competent artists and related to the text. In addition, he founded a weekly newspaper, a monthly illustrated magazine, and various other…

J. Hillis Miller: …emphasized theological concerns, as in Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers (1965), The Form of Victorian Fiction: Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Meredith, and Hardy (1968), and The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (1963). He drew heavily on ideas of the absence or death of the divine. By 1970,…

war of the theatres, in English literary history, conflict involving the Elizabethan playwrights Ben Jonson, John Marston, and Thomas Dekker. It covered a period when Jonson was writing for one children’s company of players and Marston for another, rival group. In 1599 Marston presented a mildly

Kazimierz Tetmajer: His nostalgic and pessimistic Poezje (“Poetry”), published in eight series between 1891 and 1924, shows the influence of the Romantic poet and playwright Juliusz Słowacki and of French and Belgian verse. Tetmajer’s collection of sketches and tales Na skalnym Podhalu (1903–10; Tales of the Tatras), written almost entirely in…

Polish literature: Romanticism: His two-volume Poezye (1822–23; “Poems”) was the first major literary event of the period. The second volume included parts two and four of Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), in which he combined folklore and mystic atmosphere to create a new kind of Romantic drama. Mickiewicz wrote his greatest works…