Aileen Ward (1919–2016)
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Über den Autor
Aileen Coursen Ward was born in Newark, New Jersey on April 1, 1919. She received a B.A. in English from Smith College in 1940 and an M.A. in 1942 and a doctoral degree in 1953 from Radcliffe College. She taught at several colleges and universities during her lifetime including Wellesley, Barnard, mehr anzeigen Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Brandeis, and New York University before retiring in 1990. Her biography, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, received a National Book Award in 1964 and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. She also wrote introductions to editions of William Blake and Thomas De Quincey and edited a collection of Keats's poems. She died on May 31, 2016 at the age of 97. (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen
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Wissenswertes
- Rechtmäßiger Name
- Ward, Aileen Coursen
- Geburtstag
- 1919-04-01
- Todestag
- 2016-05-31
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Newark, New Jersey, USA
- Sterbeort
- Santa Monica, California, USA
- Ausbildung
- Smith College (BA|1940)
Radcliffe College (MA|1942, PhD|1953) - Berufe
- scholar
professor of English Literature
biographer
literary critic - Organisationen
- Vassar College
Yaddo Writers' Colony
Wellesley College - Preise und Auszeichnungen
- National Book Award in Arts and Letters (1964)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1966) - Kurzbiographie
- Aileen Coursen Ward was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, NJ. After earning a bachelor's degree in English from Smith College in 1940, she enrolled in Radcliffe College, where she was awarded her master's in 1942 and a doctorate in 1953. Prof. Ward taught at Wellesley and Barnard Colleges before joining the English Department at Vassar College in 1954. Later, she taught English literature at Sarah Lawrence College, Brandeis University, and New York University. She spent nine years researching her first book, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, published in 1963. For this, she won the 1964 National Book Award and the 1963 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize in the UK -- both the first American and the first woman to win that prize. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966. Prof. Ward also wrote introductions to editions of William Blake and Thomas De Quincey and edited a collection of Keats’s poems. She served for many years on the board of Yaddo, the writers' retreat in Saratoga Springs, NY.
At her death, Prof. Ward had been at work for 50 years on a biography of Blake.
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765. John Keats: The Making of the Poet, by Aileen Ward (read 13 Jan 1964) (National Book Award arts and letters prize for 1964) (Duff Cooper prize for 1963) I read on 5 Oct 1968 Robert Gittings' biography of Keats and on 25 June 1983 Walter Jackson Bates' and liked this one by Ward the best..
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The poems in this book weren't to my taste. Keats often uses and abuses metaphor to little purpose. Those poems in praise of women (or men) were pretty uniformly uninteresting, with the exception of "Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison", which I rather liked.
The high points of this book were "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" and "Sleep and Poetry".
The former beautifully describes how one feels when reading something new that causes a change in outlook--as though the whole world that one knew shifts over to make room for an unknown and unexplored land. Or, as Keats puts it, one feels "like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken." The planet had always existed, hitherto unknown. Beautiful!
As to the latter, I cannot point to just one feature, just one segment, that makes me like it. I like the sound of it far better than the other poems in this collection, and its subject is more interesting than most. Perhaps a selection from the poem will illustrate:
Where Keats' metaphors often leave me cold, those in "Sleep and Poetry" work much better. It's certainly my favorite of the collection.
Keats' 1817 Poems is brief, and just barely worth reading through for the odd turn of phrase that stands above the rest, but for those who want the executive summary: read "Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison", "On first looking into Chapman's Homer", and "Sleep and Poetry", and leave the rest, unless you especially like the style of early Keats.… (mehr)