The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse

Front Cover
Donald Davie
Oxford University Press, 1981 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 319 pages
A treasury of some of the most beautiful and moving poems in the English language. In the introduction, the editor examines the vast variety and importance of Christian verse in English and American literature.

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Contents

ANONYMOUS 7TH10TH CENTURY
1
ANONYMOUS 14TH CENTURY
7
GEOFFREY CHAUCER c 13401400
14
Copyright

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About the author (1981)

Donald Davie was at the forefront of the poetic school of the 1950s known as the Movement. The group's aesthetic was characterized by simplicity, in contrast to the extravagant rhetoric and stylistic excesses that they felt marked neoromantic poetic trends. Unlike other Movement poets, though, Davie generally eschews a casual tenor or informal voice, resorting instead to a more traditional prosody and affirming the influence of late Augustan poets. Davie's most durable contribution to poetic debates of the period was a work of literary criticism called Purity of Diction in English Verse (1952). The laws of poetic syntax, he argues, are as momentous as the laws of human society and should be appreciated equally. Davie was born in Barnsley, a place that figures gloomily in much of his work. He has taught at universities in both Great Britain and the United States.

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