Choice Review

Post's comprehensive assessment of lyric poetry includes both greater and lesser poets--Donne, Jonson, imitators of Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan, Milton, Marvell, the Cavalier poets, and women. Post (UCLA) avoids two extremes: on the one hand, the more traditional approach of literary history, with its emphasis on historical periods, unifying themes, and overarching genres; on the other hand, the postmodern methodologies, which have inherent limitations in their interpretive outlook. The author focuses instead on the individuality of authors and the particularity of their achievements, and he relies on intensive and sustained analysis of selected poems to highlight the wholesale and diverse lyric experimentation among authors in early modern Britain. Post perceives this experimentation as the imaginative adaptation and variation of the forms and conventions of lyric poetry that were crystallized in the 16th century by authors such as Spenser and Sidney. Thus, lyric poetry achieved a state of subtlety and sophistication that made it more attractive to authors in the modern and contemporary eras. Clearly written and cogently argued, this study is highly recommended to upper-division undergraduates and above. A. C. Labriola; Duquesne University