
The Winnowing Fan
Verse-Essays in Creative Criticism
Christopher Norris(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
Published on 18. April 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-350-10730-4 (ISBN)
Description
This path-breaking book explores different ways in which writing about poetry can deepen and extend our critical engagement by deploying creatively the manifold resources of poetic language and form. Through a series of verse-essays, reflective monologues, and inventive variations on topics in literary theory The Winnowing Fan makes a strong case for revising received ideas about the scope and limits of criticism.
Norris's poems traverse the full range of European poetic history from Homer's Odyssey, through the work of French symbolists such as Mallarme, to modern writers such as Yeats, Benjamin, Heaney, Larkin, and Barthes. There are also verse-essays and shorter pieces on philosophers from Hume and Leibniz to Heidegger, Althusser, Derrida, de Man, Rorty, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben. In each case Norris seeks to free criticism from conventional academic forms and return it to an active mutual engagement with the practice of literature itself.
Norris's poems traverse the full range of European poetic history from Homer's Odyssey, through the work of French symbolists such as Mallarme, to modern writers such as Yeats, Benjamin, Heaney, Larkin, and Barthes. There are also verse-essays and shorter pieces on philosophers from Hume and Leibniz to Heidegger, Althusser, Derrida, de Man, Rorty, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben. In each case Norris seeks to free criticism from conventional academic forms and return it to an active mutual engagement with the practice of literature itself.
Reviews / Votes
The volume is full of wit, playfulness and intellectual agility ... It's a hugely ambitious, arrestingly original work, which turns criticism into poetry and poetry into critique. * Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year * The appearance of The Winnowing Fan represents a major literary event. With extraordinary skill, insight and intellectual dexterity, Christopher Norris has reinvented the poetry of ideas for our time in this enthralling collection of unique, elegant, hugely ambitious works. It's certainly the most fascinating collection of poems I've read for many a year. * Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English Literature, University of Lancaster, UK *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
336 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-10730-4 (9781350107304)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/2017
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€38.49
Available for download

E-Book
04/2017
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€38.49
Available for download
Person
Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff, Wales, and has taught at many universities in India, Australia, Greece, Spain, Germany, Canada, China, the US, and elsewhere. He is the author of numerous books on aspects of philosophy, critical theory, and modern intellectual history.
Content
Introduction
1. Verse-Crisis: Mallarme
2. The Winnowing Fan
3. Lake Isle and Peat Bog
4. Ectopiques
Index
1. Verse-Crisis: Mallarme
2. The Winnowing Fan
3. Lake Isle and Peat Bog
4. Ectopiques
Index