Duquesne University Press

After the Heavenly Tune

English Poetry and the Aspiration to Song

By Marc Berley

Published in 2000
$59.00  cloth
Short discount available
ISBN: 978-0-8207-0316-9  (0-8207-0316-8)

420 pages

Add to Order

Book Information

After the Heavenly Tune offers an expansive answer to the basic question central to the history of poetry and poetics: what do poets mean when they write “I sing?” Berley's chapters on Shakespeare and Milton unfold the remarkable development of these two “speculative musical poetics” who are central to the history of English poetry. And in his last two chapters on romanticism and modernism, he draws an intriguing line from Wordsworth to Stevens, in which the aspiration to song becomes a dazzling means of exploring, scrutinizing, and redefining the burdens and achievements—poetic, philosophical, social, and personal—for individual poets in their times. After the Heavenly Tune offers not only groundbreaking studies of The Merchant of Venice and Milton’s theory of prophecy, but also compelling new readings of classical and medieval literary theory, the burdens of romanticism, and the resolutions of modernism. This work will appeal to a broad audience: Renaissance, classical, and romantic literary scholars; philosophers; musicologists; theologians; and general readers interested in English poetry and literature.

Author Information

MARC BERLEY has taught English at Columbia, Barnard, and Rutgers and served as the president of the Foundation for Academic Standards and Tradition.