Poetics of Sight

Description: The Poetics of Sight analyses the role of sight in memory, dream and popular culture and demonstrates the structure of a complex sight within literary and visual metaphors. The book explores the topic across the twentieth century, in art from Picasso to Kapoor, in poetry from Eliot to Hughes, in aesthetics from Pound to Derrida.

Review Quotes: Anyone who reads this book will read differently afterwards.
(Jane Partner, Cambridge Quarterly, 4/2016)

I particularly liked Harvey's ability to argue his case in lucid, elegant prose [...] and there's his usual mastery of prose rhythm and the well-turned sentence to express his argument with considered authority. His scholarship is judiciously deployed. [...] I commend this book: it'll change the way you read.
(Simon Lavery, Tredynas Days, 1 June 2015)

This book contains valuable insights into literary texts [...].
(Ivan Gaskell, Essays in Criticism, Vol. 67, No. 1/2017)

John Harvey's The Poetics of Sight (2015) is an accomplished and lucid exploration of the multifaceted relationship between visual images and the written word.
(Jorge L. Contreras, PRS Review, Volume XXIV, Number 1/2016)