Pleasing Myself

Description

This volume brings together a selection of Frank Kermode's essays that have been written since the 1990s, on topics as diverse as Donne, Yeats, Howard Hodgkin, gnosticism, the sea and money, as well as futher thoughts on Shakespeare.

Author description

Sir Frank Kermode is the first literary critic to be knighted since Empson and is widely acknowledged as the head of the profession in this country. His previous books include A SENSE OF AN ENDING, his autobiography, NOT ENTITLED and the best-selling SHAKESPEARE'S LANGUAGE.

Table of contents

The modern Beowulf; world-famous Irishman; Eliot's missing lectures; Marianne Moore; Empson the poet; Empson as critic; Henry Reed; Roy Fuller; Ern Malley; on a new way of doing history; Shakespeare at work; romantic revisions; English gnostics; Bertrand Russell; A.J. Ayer; moral literacy; the Bible as it was; the sexuality of Christ; the other Yeats; Howard Hodgkin; Sylvester on modern art; the meaning of money - frozen desire; Darwin's worms; "The Search for a Perfect Language"; the sea, the sea; Sylvia Townsend Warner; Golding's last novel; Philip Roth.