Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Next Issue Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This review is taken from PN Review 42, Volume 11 Number 4, March - April 1985.

Chris McCullyRECOMMENDATIONS AND RESERVATIONS Ronald Bottrall, Against a Setting Sun (Allison & Busby) £4.95pb.
Elizabeth Bartlett, Strange Territory (Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets) £3.00pb.
Laurence Lerner, Selected Poems (Secker & Warburg) £7.95
Janet Caird, A Distant Urn (Ramsay Head Press), £3.95
Tessa Ransford, Fools and Angels (Ramsay Head Press) £4.95

The General Hash Theory of literary criticism is not dead; it sleeps unsoundly in the universities disguised as the Figure in the Carpet or the English Liberal Dilemma. Yet the GHT, prodded until it blinks awake, remains a serviceable creature. Indeed its virtues are covertly espoused even by its furious post-Structuralist heirs. Developed under its auspices, for example, are the notions that 'a good poem' is a poem that employs an integrity of language not evident in a lesser poem; that a poem is amenable to fairly detailed description through some knowledge of what used to be called philology; and that 'style' reflects a personal choice (pace Belsey) made by the poet from the 'relentless fecundity' of the English language. Above all - and here the GHT and recent critical theory seem to part company in current practice - the business of criticism is with description, not prescription.

The virtues of the GHT are lost on Terry Eagleton who, concluding his reviews for a recent number of Stand (Winter 1983-4, p.80), sums up Clive Wilmer's Devotions as follows: 'Conservative, Christian, and utterly without the sordid smack of the social, Mr. Wilmer is, in the fullest sense of the word, a Carcanet poet.' Eagleton seems to imply that 'Conservative' and 'Christian' are not features of what he calls the 'social'. This is a curious position to take, unless he means 'the Socialist' - which is what I suspect. The important point is this: that Eagleton appears to have ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image