Six Major Poets: A Critical Study (Hardcover-2024)

About the Book:

Sir Philip Sidney regarded poetry as superior to History and Philosophy, but Victorian poet Robert Browning mixed poetry with History as well as Philosophy. William Wordsworth regarded poetry as ‘… the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ that took its origin from ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’. But his close friend, Matthew Arnold, defined poetry as ‘the criticism of life’ with a due emphasis on poetic truth and poetic beauty. T.S. Eliot held that poetry ought to describe the complexities of modern life and did not bother for ‘recollection’ in ‘tranquility’. Now, a few linguists assert that a poem ought to be studied without reference to its poet or the age in which it was written. However, poetry is enjoyed in the twenty-first century in spite of the growth of science and technology. Emily Dickinson often wrote very short poems; a few of them contain a single stanza, remarkable for the use of five or six gerunds and verbs. She aptly asserted that a lesson in grammar seems impertinent when imagination takes the breath away. Poetic truth and poetic beauty are still regarded as the most important elements of poetry. Poetry cannot be separated from music, as Thomas Gray and R.N. Tagore asserted. Today, poetry has been linked with science and other technical subjects, and hence appeals to the people of the world.

About the Author: Dr. Vikas Sharma is currently working as Professor and Head of the Department of English, C.C.S. University, Meerut. He is a member of various editorial boards of peer-reviewed English journals.

He has written four books of literary criticism, including Novel as an Art Form: With Special Reference to Anglo-Indian Artists (2022). His novels are prescribed in various Indian universities' syllabi for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Moreover, students at different universities are pursuing research on his novels. His books, Treatment of History in Indian English Novels (2007) and Romantic Sensibility in the Prose Works, Essays and Journals of Emerson and Thoreau (2010), are popular among scholars.