Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Preface: aims and intentions; 1. Practical criticism and 'method'; 2. Rhythm, tone and the dangers of eye-reading; 3. Imagery, metaphor and visualisation; 4. Early and late Shakespearean verse; 5. Two epitaphs for Ben Jonson; 6. An early draft of Blake's London; 7. Relevance and irrelevance in response: another Blake poem; 8. Lyrical grace and warmth: two seventeenth-century lyrics; 9. Emotion and emotionality: Herbert's 'Life' and E. B. Browning's 'Irrepatrableness'; 10. Meaning stated and meaning created: two more Herbert poems; 11. Translations of a Latin poem; 12. Shakespeare's verse: additional exercises; 13. A case of idiosyncrasy: two poems by Hardy; 14. More creation versus statement: Frost and Edward Thomas; 15. Contrasting poems; Jonson's 'To Heaven' and Donne's 'Thou Hast Made Me'; 16. Prose; 17. Extracts from novels: a passage from George Eliot's Daniel Deronda; 18. Extracts from novels: a comparison of passages from Thackeray and Lawrence; 19. Two passages about belief: Foerster and Forster; 20. Aphorisms by Franklin and Lawrence; 21. Two modern passages on literary criticism; 22. Two pieces of eighteenth-century literary criticism; Notes; Exercises; Index.

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This useful introduction to practical criticism for students offers an impressive range of closely analysed passages and exercises, in prose and verse.