<p>English metaphysical poetry, from Donne to Marvell, is conspicuously witty. A. J. Smith seeks the central importance of wit in the thinking of the metaphysical poets, and argues that metaphysical wit is essentially different from other modes of wit current in Renaissance Europe. Formal theories and rhetorics of wit are considered both for their theoretical import and their appraisals of wit in practice. Prevailing fashions of witty invention are scrutinized in Italian, French, and Spanish writings, so as to bring out the nature and effect of various forms of wit: conceited, hieroglyphic, transformational, and others from which the metaphysical mode is distinguished. He locates the basis of Renaissance wit in the received conception of the created order and a theory of literary innovation inherent in Humanist belief, which led to novel couplings of time and eternity, body and soul, man and God. Yet, he finds that metaphysical wit distinctively works to discover a spiritual presence in sensible events; and he traces its demise in the 1660s to changes in the understanding of the natural world associated with the rise of empirical science.</p>

Metaphysical Wit

Literature & Fiction

Smith, A.J.

British & Irish

Cambridge University Press

Contains writings about John Donne from 1873 to 1923, including Henry Morley, Edmund Gosse, W.F. Collier, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry Augustin Beers, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and many others. Together these works present a record of how, from the nineteenth century onwards, critics viewed Donne, and how he became part of today's literary canon.

John Donne: The Critical Heritage (The Critical Heritage Series)

Routledge& Kegan Paul

John Donne: The Critical Heritage

History & Criticism

Routledge & Kegan Paul Books

Short Story Study: A Critical Anthology

Mason, W. H.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Hodder & Stoughton Educational Division

Sporting Clays

Sports & Outdoors

Fountain Pr Ltd

Hunting & Fishing

Willow Creek Pr

Exclusive economic zones: A review of non-living resources

BHRA (Information Services), The Fluid Engineering Centre

The book describes the competitive and innovative transportation marketplace (rail and automotive) that existed in the U. S. in the early part of this century.  It details the many ways the competition and competitors were eliminated through such concepts as automotive styling, exclusive automobile dealerships, purchase and destruction of electric interurban rail systems, etc.  The book goes on to describe new technologies, such as the fuel cell, waiting for their superiority to overcome entrenched older combustion engines.  I believe the book is vital because - as mentioned at the end of the included book review - great environmental and economic changes are beginning to force change in the U. S. for which the Europeans and Japanese have been preparing for many decades.

The Truth About Automobiles

Engineering & Transportation

Automotive

Electric CarNation

John Donne: The Critical Heritage: Volume II

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