The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive PiecesKilmer, Joyce
History
The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces
Kilmer, Joyce
American essays; Literature -- History and criticism
I am glad that you are so forgiving as to be willing to have me at
Campion on the twenty-sixth. Unless I am commanded to the contrary,
I will give "The War and the Poets" at the College and "Francis
Thompson" at the Convent. "The War and the Poets" does not get the
goats of hyphenates of any sort--I gave it in Toronto and in Notre
Dame. Also I will read some of my own stuff, new and old, at both of
these lectures unless forcibly prevented.
The two lectures on poetry, "The Ballad" and "The Sonnet," were given at
New York University, and were to have been parts of a book on the art of
versification, which the University, I believe, was to publish. In the
manuscript of these lectures we find such phrases as "this book," and
Joyce referring to himself here as "the author of a textbook." The
lecture "The Ballad" as here printed is incomplete, as the typewritten
copy of the manuscript which came into my hands, and which is the only
copy I know to be in existence, ends thus:
I will call the reader's attention to the work of some of the poets
who, in our time, have been proving the falsity of Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch's statement that
These lectures on poetry are admirably adapted to their end. They are
addressed to the student, especially "the apprentices of the craft of
verse making." They are devoted altogether to historical and technical
matters. And in the earnestness of his conception of his task here as
the author of a textbook, Joyce has very rigorously excluded anything
which could possibly be fancied as flippant. Just as sternly has he
refrained from allowing to enter his discourse any particle of color of
religious bias. He has not, however, in the slightest permitted his
independence of judgment to be subdued in his interpretation of purely
literary points. So these lectures do not lack for vitality, and exhibit
again, in a less known manner of his writing, his exceptional clarity of
style.
As in his life, so in his writings. Joyce moved in many circles, and
though always quite himself, so did he, too, always fit where he found
himself. An exceedingly active professional writer, he was called upon
to write for various audiences. When he was entrusted with writing the
articles on Madison Cawein, Francis Thompson, John Masefield, and
William Vaughn Moody for "Warner's Library of the World's Best
Literature," and when he was invited to contribute the introductory
essay to Thomas Hardy's novel "The Mayor of Casterbridge" in "The Modern
Library," he was to address a more or less popular audience of general
character, and he did that with ability and distinguished literary tact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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