| Selected Poems: John Gay Contributor(s): Gay, John (Author), Walsh, Marcus (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1857547020 ISBN-13: 9781857547023 Publisher: Carcanet Press OUR PRICE: $10.76 Product Type: Paperback Published: July 2006 Annotation: This selection from a master of parody and pastiche enables Gay's poetry to take place alongside his drama as a distinctive reflection of his age. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 821.5 |
| Series: Fyfield Books |
| Physical Information: 0.3" H x 5.38" W x 8.58" (0.34 lbs) 96 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: John Gay (1685-1732) was part of the association of wits that included Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. But though Gay's exposure of weakness and folly is no less acute than theirs, his wit is characterised by a benign and ironic sense of the fallibility of humankind. Gay is a great master of parody and pastiche, and the quality of Gay's poetry, as Marcus Walsh points out in his introduction, lies in its sense of verbal play. The ironic appreciation of life as it is that makes his Beggar's Opera enduringly popular is present in his poetry. Trivia, which Gay's biograher called the greatest poem on London in English literature, teems with the chaotic energy of the 18th-century city, while The Shepherd's Week is a pastoral of comic realism. This selection enables Gay's poetry to take its place alongside his drama as one of the most distinctive reflections of his age. |