Bunting: The Shaping of His Verse

by Peter Makin

Overview

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is now recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century British poets. This study is the first book-length analysis of his life and poetic achievement. Makin focuses particularly on the saints and warriors that occupy a central position in Bunting's masterpiece, Briggflatts, and on the forms of music and of Northumbrian painting and writing that help determine its structure. This study reveals Bunting as a major figure both in the development of modernism and of twentieth-century poetry as a whole. Oxford University Press is also publishing Bunting's Uncollected Poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198112549
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/19/1992
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	5.63(w) x 8.81(h) x 1.15(d)

About the Author

Kansai University, Osaka

Table of Contents

	List of Plates	xvii
	Texts and Sources	xix
Part I.	Development
1	Ancestors	3
2	Villon in Paris	20
3	At Rapallo	35
4	Chomei	63
5	The Well of Lycopolis	74
6	The Spoils	101
7	Home	119
Part II.	Matter
8	Briggflatts: Plot and Parables	129
9	Warriors	160
10	Saints	190
Part III.	The Form Of Poetry
11	The Lindisfarne Gospels	219
12	Music	239
Part IV.	Theory
Part V.	Coda
	Appendices
1(a)	On the Use of Quantitative Metres in English	326
1(b)	On the Teaching of the Classics and Quantity	327
2(a)	Eric, Egil, and History in Briggflatts	328
2(b)	Viking Technic	329
3	St Cuthbert in the Hands of Bede	331
4	The Cultural Affiliations of the Lindisfarne Gospels	334
5(a)	On the Centrality of Sound in Poetry	337
5(b)	Forms of Sound and Forms of Meaning	340
5(c)	Bunting's Models for Sonata Form	341
6	Solipsism and the Community	344
	Bibliography	346
	Index	359

Editorial Reviews

"What is most valuable about this book is the rich ground of Bunting's life and intellectual experience Makin has laid out for the reader....What you will find in Makin's book is the sort of instruction that leads to delight."—Harvard Review

"This will be a work of lasting value."—Magill's Literary Annual

"A student reading this book for information and opinion on a certain Bunting poem will find it. A professional scholar of literary modernism and British poetry will find documentary completeness, admirable integration of work and life, and thoughtful context-building on the art and history of the neglected north."—Modernism

From the Publisher