Autumn 2009 Catalogue 4 pdfing:1 - Yale University Press

“Matter of Glorious Trial”Spiritual and Material Substance in ‘Paradise Lost’N. K. SugimuraThis groundbreaking book, the first to examine Milton’sthinking about matter and substance throughout his entirepoetic career, seeks to alter the prevailing critical view thatMilton was a monist-materialist—one who believes that allthings are composed of material and all phenomena (includingconsciousness) are the result of material interactions.Based on her close study of the philosophical movements ofMilton’s mind, Sugimura discovers the ‘fluid intermediaries’ inhis poetry that are neither strictly material nor immaterial. Indoing so, Sugimura uses Paradise Lost as a fascinating windowinto the intersection of literature and philosophy, and of literarystudies and intellectual history. Sugimura finds that Miltondisplays a tense and ambiguous relationship with the idealisticdualism of Plato and the materialism of Aristotle and she arguesfor a more nuanced interpretation of Milton’s metaphysics.“engages with Milton’s work on a formidably wide range offronts—theological, pneumatological, metaphysical,linguistic—and in doing so establishes its case convincingly,displaying a remarkable range of learning and industry.”—Colin Burrow, All Souls College, University of OxfordN. K. Sugimura is Research Fellow in English, Gonville andCaius College, University of Cambridge.January 352 pp. 234x156mm.Paper ISBN 978-0-300-13559-6 £40.00Literature/Poetry 61The Maine WoodsA Fully AnnotatedEditionHenry D. ThoreauEdited by Jeffrey S. Cramer“On the 31st of August, 1846,I left Concord inMassachusetts for Bangor andthe backwoods of Maine”—thus begins The Maine Woods,the evocative story ofThoreau’s journeys through afamiliar yet untouched land.As he explores Mt. Katahdin (an Indian word meaning‘highest land’), Lake Chesuncook, the Allagash River and theEast Branch of the Penobscot, Thoreau muses on his ownvulnerability and the humility engendered by his solitude inthe wilderness. Throughout, Thoreau invokes the forest ofMaine—the mountains, waterways, fauna, flora and thepeople—in his singular style. Echoing Walden, Thoreau’spassionate outcry against the degradation of the environmentin The Maine Woods will resonate strongly today. This fullyannotated gift edition of The Maine Woods makes the perfectcompanion volume to Walden.Jeffrey Cramer is curator of collections, the Thoreau Instituteat Walden Woods.January 384 pp. 234x190mm. 11 b/w illus.ISBN 978-10-300-12283-1 £25.00*Lyric Poetry andModern PoliticsRussia, Poland, and the WestClare CavanaghLyric Poetry and Modern Politics explores the intersection ofpoetry, national life and national identity in Poland andRussia, from 1917 to the present. As a corrective to recenttrends in criticism, acclaimed translator and critic ClareCavanagh demonstrates how the practice of the personal lyricin totalitarian states such as Russia and Poland did notrepresent an escapist tendency; rather it reverberated as a boldpolitical statement and at times a dangerous act.Cavanagh also provides a comparative study of modern poetryfrom the perspective of the eastern and western sides of theIron Curtain. Among the poets discussed are Blok,Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Yeats, Whitman, Frost, Szymborska,Zagajewski and Milosz; close readings of individual poems areincluded, some translated for the first time. Cavanaghexamines these poets and their work as a challenge to Westernpostmodernist theories, thus offering new perspectives ontwentieth-century lyric poetry.Clare Cavanagh is Associate Professor and Herman andBeulah Pearce Miller Research Professor in Literature in theDepartment of Slavic Languages and Literatures atNorthwestern University.January 320 pp. 234x156mm.Paper ISBN 978-0-300-15296-8 £30.00Czeslaw MiloszandJoseph BrodskyFellowship of PoetsIrena Grudzinska GrossThe intimate portrayal of thefriendship between two iconsof twentieth-century poetry,Czeslaw Milosz and JosephBrodsky, highlights the parallellives of the poets as exilesliving in America and NobelPrize laureates in literature. To create this truly original work,Irena Grudzinska Gross draws from poems, essays, letters,interviews, speeches, lectures and her own personal memoriesas a confidant of both Milosz and Brodsky.The dual portrait of these poets and the elucidation of theirattitudes towards religion, history, memory and languagethrow a new light on the upheavals of the twentieth-century.Gross also incorporates notes on both poets’ relationships toother key literary figures, such as W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag,Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand, Robert Haas andDerek Walcott.Irena Grudzinska Gross teaches in the Slavic Languages andLiteratures Department at Princeton University.January 288 pp. 210x140mm.ISBN 978-0-300-14937-1 £30.00*Polish rights: held by the author