Les Fins de Siecle

Arranged chronologically, the chapters treat English poetry and culture at successive turns-of-the-century. The result is a rich picture of the ways calendar and culture affect one another. Even if we must pass through our own century's turn "unprotected", these pictures from the past provide an array of models that may prove useful: the book shows us portraits of the final decade as a radical invitation to political distribution (Braudy), as a prolonged kiss (McGann), as an assassin (Vendler), and even as an Hegelian reader,"curled up in an easy chair" wishing to exempt itself from the rest of the century (de Grazia). The number of great poets who wrote at their century's end - Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare - works to deepen our attention to the poetry now emerging in the 1990S.