This book does a nice job of presenting justification for clinical integration, and goes further to offer practical guidelines. In combination with Searight's book, it would make a good course on the topic.

An excellent source-book for anyone studying Middle English. It compiles an extensive selection of excerpts which demonstrate the ways in which medieval English writers struggled with the concept of writing in English, and defended their use of the vernacular. The accompanying essays range from excellent to mediocre, but the texts themselves make the book worth buying. By compiling texts about medieval literary theory, this book begins to fill a major gap in medieval studies.

I saw his painter already. whoever that day not accepted his painter of me. someday when his color saw it review.

Needless to say, Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON is one of the preeminent works of biography and should be read by anyone interested in Johnson or the genre. It is a great book (also great is W. Jackson Bate's SAMUEL JOHNSON [1st published 1975]which is a MUST for anyone interested in Johnson). But although I love the Everyman's Library, I do not recommend this edition of Boswell. Unlike the usual quality of the Everyman's Library, its Boswell is rife with typographical errors (there's even missing text!). Though it's the only edition of Boswell I've read, I regret that a correct edition is not on my bookshelf. That being said, if this is the only affordable hardcover version you can find -- and you buy only hardcovers -- go ahead and purchase the Everyman's despite the numerous and distracting errors.

This book will redefine your concepts of biography, of philology and of intellect. However critically James Boswell is rated as a writer, the fact remains that his biography of Johnson remains the standard by which all others are judged, and by which they ultimately fall--flat on their condescending faces.

Who was Samuel Johnson? He was, in one sense, the first literary celebrity. His fabled dictionary of the English language was, a few years down the road, superceded and greatly improved upon by the dictionary written by Noah Webster. His tour of Scotland and the book that ensued from it hardly rank with the other literary giants of English. And his essays, indisputably brilliant, remain sadly that: forms of literature seldom read, and lacking the artistic force of the play, the novel, the poem.

What Boswell shows us about Johnson is that he was the sharpest conversationalist of his time in a society that cultivated the very finest of witty speakers. Living off the beneficence of friends, off a royally-provided pension, and leading what he readily acknowledged to be a life of idleness, Johnson was a sought-after personality invigorated by one of the brightest literary minds ever.

Boswell introduces the genius, his pathos, his melancholy, his piety, his warmth, and most of all his stinging wit. That he loved and respected Johnson, and sought to honor his memory, can only be doubted by an utter cynic or someone serving a lifetime of durance in academia.

"All intellectual improvement arises from leisure..." "You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it." "Sir, they [Americans] are a parcel of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." "He was dull in a new way, and that made people think him great." "...it is our duty to maintain the subordination of civilized society..." "It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession." Boswell: "...you are an idle set of people." Johnson: "Sir, we are a city of philosophers." "We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards."

And best of all, and immortal to boot, is this: "No man but a blockhead writes, except for money."

Buy this book. Read it. It's humanity at its wittiest and most complex.

Boswell was not the obvious choice to write the best biography about Samuel Johnson, much less one of the greatest biographies in world literature. He had much less contact with Johnson than Mrs. Thrale, for many years a close friend of Johnson who spent much more time with him than did Boswell. In fact, Boswell spent perhaps 400 days with Johnson over a period of many years. He also was not Johnson's literary executor. Finally, Boswell was regarded by many of his day, and afterwards, as something of an 18th Century celebrity hound. He made a point of meeting every famous person he could (Voltaire, Rousseau), and went to great efforts to make himself famous. Nevertheless, in his Life of Johnson, Boswell succeeded in portraying Johnson and his circle so vividly that more than 200 years later they come across as real human beings. He did this by breaking the convention of concentrating only on the most favorable aspects of his subject's life, and instead describing Johnson's eccentricities of dress, behavior, etc. Moreover, Boswell did not neglect to include incidents that make himself appear ridiculous. The book is both extremely funny and moving. If you read this, you will want to immediatley get a copy of Boswell's book on the trip that Johnson and he took to the Hebrides.

Having read the entire collection from cover to cover, I would have to say that there is much to interest the student of poetry. "The Great Hunger" is a very powerful early work. In some ways, I think that Kavanagh the poet lived in the shadow of that one achievement. Did Kavanagh rise to his potential? He might say that he did not. Was he too caught up in the image of being a poet? I think not. Did he put too many hopes in poetry as a means of financial salvation? Perhaps. However, whatever else Kavanagh's work is, it is REAL. The world he writes about is real. The cultures of ivory tower and religion that he often rails against are not as real as life is for the average person. This is the work's strongest suit. I would say this collection is more than worth a tour, but be prepared for much bitterness--and, to be fair, some occasional light hearted frivolity--and have a pint of Guiness after.

Patrick Kavanagh seemed to me something completely new when I read this collection. In a country whose poetic voice was governed by the genius of Yeats for so long, Kavanagh comes along as a genuine alternative; of the common man, or the country village and the pub and the field. Kavanagh is no mere realist though; his poems are sometimes mythic and beautiful as well.

What a pity that the greatest of the Irish poets has not yet taken his rightful place in the higher places of learning in this country. As a fellow rural Irishman I have always considered Kavanagh to be 'my reality poet' who had, nevertheless, an extraordinary insight into the drawingrooms or cesspools of the 20th century Irish Catholic mind. His poem Lough Derg is without a doubt not just a poem but a vivid painting with words. 'They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg
With all the bitterness of nonentities, and the envy of the inarticulate when dealing with the artist'. In the same poem he writes in reference to Irish neutrality during the Second World War,'All Ireland that froze for want of Europe' and froze from an ice-cold vision of DeValera. Read over and over again.This poem like many others are works of extraordinary perception and cultural analysis.. For many years I myself have searched for a definition of culture, you know, that something that is supposed to make us the same or different, but alas. In 'Memory of Brother Michael' I find: 'Culture is always something that was. Something pedants can measure, Skull of bard,thigh of chief, Depth of dried up river. Shall we be thus for ever? Shall we be thus for ever? It appears vey likely.