Named an Outstanding Academic Book by "Choice" magazine, "The Ordeal of Robert Frost" depicts Frost as a thoroughly contemporary poet, dynamically engaged - in his own way - with the developments of literary modernism and American cultural criticism and with the social and political issues of his time. Placing Frost's critical concerns in a broad context of literary theory, Mark Richardson explores the poet's struggles with the vocation of poetry - spiritually, socially, aesthetically, and personally. Through close readings of Frost's poetry and often ignored prose, Richardson argues that Frost's debates with Van Wyck Brooks, Malcolm Cowley, and H. L. Mencken informed his poetics and his poetic style just as much as did his deep identification with earlier writers like Emerson and William James. Richardson also uncovers Frost's neglected similarities with, and important differences from, Pound and Eliot.
- ISBN10 0252023382
- ISBN13 9780252023385
- Publish Date 1 July 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 10 July 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Illinois Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English