Christopher Smart and Satire


Book Description

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.




Christopher Smart and Satire


Book Description

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.




Christopher Smart


Book Description

"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




Christopher Smart's English Lyrics


Book Description

In the first full-length study of Christopher Smart’s translations and the place and function of translation in Smart’s poetry, Rosalind Powell proposes a new approach to understanding the relationship between Smart’s poetics and his practice. Drawing on translation theory from the early modern period to the present day, this book addresses Smart's translations of Horace, Phaedrus and the Psalms alongside the better-known religious works such as Jubilate Agno and A Song to David. Five recurrent threads run throughout Powell’s study: the effect of translation on the identity of a narrative voice in a rewritten text; the techniques that are used to present translated texts to a new literary, cultural and linguistic readership; performance and reading contexts; the translation of great works as an attempt to achieve literary permanence; and, finally, the authorial influence of Smart himself in terms of the overt religiosity and nationalism that he champions in his writing. In exploring Smart’s major translation projects and revisiting his original poems, Powell offers insights into classical reception and translation theory; attitudes towards censorship; expressions of nationalism in the period; developments in liturgy and hymnody; and the composition of children’s books and school texts in the early modern era. Her detailed analysis of Smart’s translating poetics places them within a new, contemporary context and locality to uncover the poet's works as a coherent project of Englishing.




Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-first Century


Book Description

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.




My Cat Jeoffry


Book Description




Satire and Secrecy in English Literature from 1650 to 1750


Book Description

This book revises assumptions about satire as a public, masculine discourse derived from classical precedents, in order to develop theoretical and critical paradigms that accommodate women, popular culture, and postmodern theories of language as a potentially aggressive, injurious act. Although Habermas places satirists like Swift and Pope in the public sphere, this book investigates their participation in clandestine strategies of attack in a world understood to be harboring dangerous secrets. Authors of anonymous pamphlets as well as major figures including Behn, Dryden, Manley, Swift, and Pope, share at times what Swift called the writer's "life by stealth."




Lamb


Book Description

Everyone knows about the immaculate conception and the crucifixion. But what happened to Jesus between the manger and the Sermon on the Mount? In this hilarious and bold novel, the acclaimed Christopher Moore shares the greatest story never told: the life of Christ as seen by his boyhood pal, Biff. Just what was Jesus doing during the many years that have gone unrecorded in the Bible? Biff was there at his side, and now after two thousand years, he shares those good, bad, ugly, and miraculous times. Screamingly funny, audaciously fresh, Lamb rivals the best of Tom Robbins and Carl Hiaasen, and is sure to please this gifted writer’s fans and win him legions more.




Jubilate Agno


Book Description




The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 3 Volume Set


Book Description

Provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the poetry, drama, fiction, and literary and cultural criticism produced from the Restoration of the English monarchy to the onset of the French Revolution Comprises over 340 entries arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Written by an international team of leading and emerging scholars Features an impressive scope and range of subjects: from courtship and circulating libraries, to the works of Samuel Johnson and Sarah Scott Includes coverage of both canonical and lesser-known authors, as well as entries addressing gender, sexuality, and other topics that have previously been underrepresented in traditional scholarship Represents the most comprehensive resource available on this period, and an indispensable guide to the rich diversity of British writing that ushered in the modern literary era 3 Volumes www.literatureencyclopedia.com