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Frank Kermode

    November 29, 1919 – August 17, 2010

    Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic whose work was distinguished by a profound engagement with the theory of fiction. His writings often explored how individuals construct meaning from narratives and how this interpretation evolves over time. Kermode investigated how literary forms reflect and shape our understanding of the world and our own existence. His critical approach illuminated the complexities of literary art and its place within human culture.

    Frank Kermode
    The sense of an ending : studies in the theory of fiction : with a new epilogue
    The Age of Shakespeare
    The Tempest
    The Literary Guide to the Bible
    The Literature of Renaissance England
    Writers at Work: Sixth Series, The Paris Review Interviews
    • 2021
    • 2016

      Continuities (Routledge Revivals)

      • 238 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      Exploring the intersection of literature with history and politics, this collection features reviews by Frank Kermode, focusing on influential figures such as T. S. Eliot and Edmund Wilson. Originally published in 1968, the essays reflect Kermode's insights from 1962 to 1967, offering a rich analysis of novelists, poets, and critics. This work serves as a valuable resource for students of English literature, providing a deeper understanding of the literary landscape of the time.

      Continuities (Routledge Revivals)
    • 2014

      The Living Milton (Routledge Revivals)

      Essays by Various Hands

      • 192 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      The collection of essays presents a fresh perspective on Milton, showcasing the relevance of his poetry to contemporary readers. Scholars, primarily known for their modern literary critiques, argue for Milton's enduring significance, countering claims of his irrelevance. Through cogent and mature analyses, the essays aim to restore Milton's rightful place in the literary canon, appealing to both his admirers and those interested in modern poetry.

      The Living Milton (Routledge Revivals)
    • 2014

      Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne

      Renaissance Essays

      • 314 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      Exploring key literature from the Renaissance, this collection of essays delves into significant works and themes that defined the era. It examines the cultural context and impact of various texts, offering insights into the literary landscape of the time. Each essay provides a critical analysis, highlighting the contributions of notable authors and the evolution of literary forms during this transformative period in history.

      Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne
    • 2009

      Concerning E. M. Forster

      • 180 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      A major reassessment of the great English novelistThis impressive new the celebrated British critic Frank Kermode examines hitherto neglected aspects of the novelist E. M. Forster€™s life and work. Kermode is interested to see how it was that this apparently shy, reclusive man should have claimed and kept such a central position in the English writing of his time, even though for decades he composed no fiction and he was not close to any of his great contemporaries€”Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce.Concerning E. M. Forster has at its core the Clark Lectures that Kermode gave at Cambridge University in 2007 on the subject of Forster, eighty years after Forster himself gave those lectures, which became Aspects of the Novel. Kermode reappraised the influence and meaning of that great work, assessed the significance of Forster€™s profound musicality (Britten thought him the most mu

      Concerning E. M. Forster
    • 2005

      The Age of Shakespeare

      • 240 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      3.9(40)Add rating

      In The Age of Shakespeare, Frank Kermode uses the history and culture of the Elizabethan era to enlighten us about William Shakespeare and his poetry and plays. Opening with the big picture of the religious and dynastic events that defined England in the age of the Tudors, Kermode takes the reader on a tour of Shakespeare’s England, vividly portraying London’s society, its early capitalism, its court, its bursting population, and its epidemics, as well as its arts—including, of course, its theater. Then Kermode focuses on Shakespeare himself and his career, all in the context of the time in which he lived. Kermode reads each play against the backdrop of its probable year of composition, providing new historical insights into Shakspeare’s characters, themes, and sources. The result is an important, lasting, and concise companion guide to the works of Shakespeare by one of our most eminent literary scholars.

      The Age of Shakespeare
    • 2004

      The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central pleasure and change . He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. Kermode also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale University), John Guillory (New York University), and Carey Perloff (director of the American Conservatory Theatre) offer incisive comments on these essays, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder. The volume begins with a helpful introduction by Robert Alter. Theresult is a stimulating and accessible discussion of a highly significant cultural debate.

      Pleasure and change: the aesthetics of canon
    • 2001

      Romantic Image

      • 224 pages
      • 8 hours of reading
      3.9(46)Add rating

      This classic work, back in print for the first time in over a decade, questions the public's harsh perception of the artist, while at the same time gently poking fun at the artists' own, often inflated self-image. schovat popis

      Romantic Image
    • 2001

      Shakespeare's Language

      • 320 pages
      • 12 hours of reading
      3.9(96)Add rating

      The true biography of Shakespeare is in the plays. The great English tragedies were all written in the first decade of the seventeenth century. They are often in language that is difficult to us, and must have been hard even for contemporaries. How and why did Shakespeare's language develop as it did? schovat popis

      Shakespeare's Language
    • 2000

      s/t: With a New EpilogueFrank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas.

      The sense of an ending : studies in the theory of fiction : with a new epilogue