• ISBN13: 9781474481489
• Binding: Paperback
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Edinburgh UP
• Publisher Imprint: Edinburgh
• Publication Date: January 1, 2023
• Pages: 344
• Original Price: GBP 25.99
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 495 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): Shakespeare, Poetry, and European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

This book argues the idea that Shakespeare was deeply engaged with other poets and with pursuing a career as a poet, and that the organisational schemes of the Sonnets have been hiding in plain sight for over four centuries. The fundamental reason why his schemes have gone unnoticed is historical: within decades of his death, conventions of sonnet sequences became unfamiliar, and they have largely remained so since. Weaving together ideas of the Sonnets as a free-standing sequence and as a sonnet sequence among other poets' complex sequences, we discover new insights into Shakespeare's career as a poet.

Monte, Steven: - Steven Monte is Full Professor of English at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He has also taught at the University of Chicago and at Yale University, from which he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature. His scholarship focuses on Renaissance and post-Romantic poetry in English and French. His book publications include Victor Hugo: Selected Poetry (Carcanet, 2001; Routledge, 2002) and Invisible Fences: Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature (Nebraska, 2000). His articles are on subjects ranging from the Renaissance sonnet sequence to Emily Dickinson and difficulty in modern poetry. He is currently working on a verse translation of Joachim Du Bellay's Les Regrets.