How Long to Read The Offense of Poetry

How Long Does it Take to Read The Offense of Poetry?

It takes the average reader 4 hours and 48 minutes to read The Offense of Poetry by Hazard Adams

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

There is something offensive and scandalous about poetry, judging by the number of attacks on it and defenses of it written over the centuries. Poetry, Hazard Adams argues, exists to offend - not through its subject matter but through the challenges it presents to the prevailing view of what language is for. Poetry's main cultural value is its offensiveness; it should be defended as offensive. Adams specifies four poetic offenses - gesture, drama, fiction, and trope - and devotes a chapter to each, ranging across the landscape of traditional literary criticism and exploring the various attitudes toward poetry, including both attacks and defenses, offered by writers from Plato and Aristotle to Sidney, Vico, Blake, Yeats, and Seamus Heaney, among others. "Criticism," Adams writes, "needs renewal in every age to free poetry from the prejudices of that age and the unintended prejudices of even the best critics of the past, to free poetry to perform its provocative, antithetical cultural role." Poetry achieves its cultural value by opposing the binary oppositions - form and content, fact and fiction, reason and emotion - that structure and polarize most understandings of literature and of life. Adams takes a position antithetical to the extremes of both abstract formalism and the politicization of literary content. He concludes with an appreciation of what he calls the double offense of "great bad poetry," poetry so exceptionally bad that it transcends its shortcomings and leads to gaiety. He reminds us that Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, identified angels with the settled and coercive and assigned the qualities of energy and creativity to his devils. According to Adams, poetry, in its broad and traditional sense of all imaginative writing, may be identified with Blake's devils.

How long is The Offense of Poetry?

The Offense of Poetry by Hazard Adams is 284 pages long, and a total of 72,136 words.

This makes it 96% the length of the average book. It also has 88% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read The Offense of Poetry Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 6 hours and 34 minutes to read The Offense of Poetry aloud.

What Reading Level is The Offense of Poetry?

The Offense of Poetry is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy The Offense of Poetry?

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