Tuesday, October 16, 2012

News at Eleven: But even if it would be pointless to call

[John Wilmot, earl of] Rochester the first modern voice in English poetry, he's a practitioner of what has become an important artistic technique--claiming authenticity by being deliberately shocking.

'The Maidenhead' begins unremarkably (setting aside the title, which may not always have circulated with the poem when it was new). In fact it starts like the type of poetry popular at the start of the seventeenth century (fifty years before Rochester was born).

from The Spectator: The shock value of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester

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