The Daring Muse is a challenging account of the richness and complexity of Augustan poetry. It takes in a broad range of writers from the Restoration to the Regency, from Rochester and Dryden to Cowper and Crabbe, and shows the essential connections between them. Augustan poetry has too often been thought of as uniform, staidly classical, even dull. Margaret Doody explodes this myth once and for all. She shows it to be poetry of great energy and diversity: of extravagant conceits, subversive parody, incessant stylistic and formal experimentation; a self-consciously innovative poetry that sought to express and extend the perpetual, restless activity of the human mind. Both the principles and techniques of the verse are related to similar elements in the novels of the period; the book's numerous illustrations help to show how the poems were presented and interpreted in their own time.
List of illustrations; A note on editions; Preface; Introduction; 1. Appetite, imperialism and the fair variety of things; 2. Some origins of Augustan practice: Civil War verse and its implications; 3. Generic self-sconsciousness: from closed to open forms; 4. The new Augustans and the Roman poets; 5. Charivari and metamorphosis; 6. Metamorphosis, pleasure and pain: the threat of the end; 7. Character, style, language: the two voices of Augustan poems; 8. Augustan voice and Augustan verse; Notes; Index.
