{"product_id":"poetical-dust-poets-corner-and-the-making-of-britain-hardback-9780812247503","title":"Poetical Dust; Poets' Corner and the Making of Britain (Hardback) 9780812247503","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003ePoetical Dust\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003ePoets' Corner and the Making of Britain\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eThomas A. Prendergast (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780812247503\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 8 January 2016\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e256 pages, 19 illus.\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.588 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"Prendergast's book evokes a cultural marketplace bustling with competing voices and stories, where poets (in their afterlives) struggle to be heard above the noise of diverse meaning-mongers and lobbyists.\" (\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e) \"\u003ci\u003ePoetical Dust\u003c\/i\u003e provides a bold and eye-opening history of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. Beginning with the deaths of Edward the Confessor and Thomas Becket, moving through Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Pope, and arriving in the present day, Thomas Prendergast examines how this revered architectural space has been critical to the formation of a British literary canon and, beyond that, British national identity.\" (David Haven Blake, author of \u003ci\u003eWalt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in London, the bodies of more than seventy men and women, primarily writers, poets, and playwrights, are interred, with many more memorialized. From the time of the reburial of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1556, the space has become a sanctuary where some of the most revered figures of English letters are celebrated and remembered. Poets' Corner is now an attraction visited by thousands of tourists each year, but for much of its history it was also the staging ground for an ongoing debate on the nature of British cultural identity and the place of poetry in the larger political landscape.\u003cbr\u003e Thomas Prendergast's \u003ci\u003ePoetical Dust\u003c\/i\u003e offers a provocative, far-reaching, and witty analysis of Poets' Corner. Covering nearly a thousand years of political and literary history, the book examines the chaotic, sometimes fitful process through which Britain has consecrated its poetry and poets. Whether exploring the several burials of Chaucer, the politicking of Alexander Pope, or the absence of William Shakespeare, Prendergast asks us to consider how these relics attest to the vexed, melancholy ties between the literary corpse and corpus. His thoughtful, sophisticated discussion reveals Poets' Corner to be not simply a centuries-old destination for pilgrims and tourists alike but a monument to literary fame and the inevitable decay of the bodies it has both rejected and celebrated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePreface\u003cbr\u003e Introduction\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Westminster Abbey and the Incorporation of Poets' Corner\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. Melancholia, Monumental Resistance, and the Invention of Poets' Corner\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. Love, Literary Publicity, and the Naming of Poets' Corner\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. Absence and the Public Poetics of Regret\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5. Poetic Exhumation and the Anxiety of Absence\u003cbr\u003e Coda. Necromancy and the American Poets' Corner\u003cbr\u003e Poets' Corner Graveplan\u003cbr\u003e Poets' Corner Alphabetical Burial and Monument List\u003cbr\u003e Chronological List of Stones and Monuments in the South Transept\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52740415160600,"sku":"9780812247503","price":45.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/poetical-dust-poets-corner-and-the-making-of-britain-hardback-9780812247503","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}