Murder Ballads: Exhuming the Body Buried Beneath Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692734629)

In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were engaged in a top secret experiment. This was not, as many assume, the creation of a book of poetry. A book emerged, to be sure-the landmark Lyrical Ballads. But in Murder Ballads, David John Brennan posits that the two poets were in fact pursuing far different ends: to birth from their poems a singular, idealized Poet.Despite their success, such Frankensteinian pursuits proved rife with consequence for the men. Doubts and questions plagued them: What does it mean to be a poet if your work is not your own? Who is best fit to lay claim to a parcel of poetic property that was collaboratively crafted and bequeathed to a fictitious Poet? How does one kill a Poet born of one's own hand?Blending critical examination with jocular playlets-in-verse featuring the authors of the two books in baffled conversation, Murder Ballads reopens a 200-year-old cold case that never received a proper investigation: Who was the first true Author of Lyrical Ballads, and how exactly did he die?

Author: David John Brennan
ISBN-10: 0692734627
ISBN-13: 9780692734629
Publisher: Punctum Books
Language: English
Published: 06/27/2016
Pages: 162
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.35d