Description: Lives of the Dead Poets explores the biographical interest that has marked the posthumous reception of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It argues that this fascination with the poetic life--a special case of the attachments we form to poetic figures--speaks to the mode of poetry's survival into modernity.
Brief description: Karen Swann is Morris Professor of Rhetoric Emerita in the Williams College English Department. She currently teaches at Bard Microcollege Holyoke.
Review Quotes: ...The Lives of the Dead Poets presents a complex argument, in elegant writing... which is also highly respectful of other critics.-- "Review 19"