Author Description

"Based on four Neilson Lectures delivered at Smith College, this book examines a series of "promenade poems," lyrics that follow a poetic speaker moving through a landscape and responding to it. Thomas M. Greene invites the reader to consider a wide range of poets, beginning with Amy Clampitt and A. R. Ammons, and continuing with Petrarch, Ronsard, Saint-Amant, Milton, Vaughan, Marvell and Whitman. An afterword, "The Morality of Literary Interpretation," surveys critically a range of hermeneutic theories and formulates a position that accords the literary text both autonomy and mystery."--BOOK JACKET.