CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

TITLE OF BOOK
The Endiburgh Introduction To Studying English Literature
(Poetry)
Program Study
Language and Communication

Lecturer :
Prof. Dr. Sri Minda Murni

Created by :
NAME : Anita Basrah
REG.NUMBER : 8186112005
KELAS : B

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
MEDAN
2018
 Preface

First of all, I feel like saying “thanks for God’s love and grace for us. Thanks to God
for helping me and give me chance to finish this assigment timely. And I would like to say
‘’tahnk you” to mom Prof. Dr. Sri Minda Murni as the lecture that always teached us and
give much knowledge about how to practice english well.
This assigment is the one of english task that composed of critical book review.
realized this assigment is not perferct. But I hope that it can be useful for us Critcsa and
Suggestion are needed here to make this assigment be better. Hopefully, we as as student in
UNIMED can work more professional by using English as the second language, whatever we
done. Thank you
 TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE

BAB 1 BACKGROUND

Objective and Benefits

BAB II DEFINITIAN AND DISCUSSION

BAB III SUMMARY AND CONTENT

BAB IV ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

Strength and Weakness

BAB V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

Conclusion

Suggestion
 BAB I

BACKGROUND

Bibliographic Information

Name of book :The Endiburgh Introduction To Studying English Literature

The certain tpic : Poetry
Author : edited by Dermot Cavanagh, Alan gillis, michelle keown, james loxely and
randall stevenson

Year : in this edition Edinburgh univerity press, 210

amount of section : four section

amount of pages : 234 pages

distribution and city : edinburgh university press Ltd 22 george Square, edinburgh

www.euppublishing.com
 A. BACKGROUND

Reading literature offers us diverse and abiding pleasure and can be rewarding in a
great variety of ways. Such pleasures , though, can be enhanced, sustained and deepened by
the critical the study of literature, and such study can be an absorbing, challenging and
enriching experince in itself. This book aim to open the door to such experience and to give a
glimpse of its rewards. Expert, through, up to date and easy to follow, the chapters which
follow provide a straight forward and effective pathway towards increasing your enjoyment
and broadening your understanding of literature.

Based on this book’s background of this study “literature”, I can tell my reaction that
this book can be a special way for enhancing, enriching, deepending, knowledge about
english literath ure so that learning englis literature is not glimpsed. This book can be a
sustaining in developing our reference in learning english literature. It’s meant, this book has
several discussion about literature suject. Especially student s of university, using this book
they afford to increase reference in learning literature.

Actually, this book has several main discussion completely with its own interesting
topic and explanation such as the most complete discussion about introductionary of
linguistic, complete discussion about poetry, narrative and the detail discussion about english
drama section. Even though, this book has weakness in the most complete all materials
‘literature’,but this book need to take considering cause complete discussion in 4 matters of
english literature types.

B. Objective and Benefits

The chapters of this book do not to be read in sequence, and you may find it more
useful to read particular chapters or section in an order that suits your own needs. The book
aims to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the forms and techniques
literature uses and the variety of ways in which it can be interprted. This mean that essays do
use specific and specialist terminology to define particular critical approaches and literary
techniques.

These are explained by each constributor as they arise in discussion. Later chapters
my refer back to these definitions and indicate where each term first occurs, however, if you
find a particular term or idea puzzling. The index will point you towards the page or pages
where it is explained and to any subsequent uses elucidation. At the end of each chapter you
will find a list of next steps indicating critical works that our contributors judge to be good
places to continue your own reading and research in particular area.

If we talke about the objective from this book, actually this book’s author said “ the
book aims to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the forms and techniques
literature uses and variety of ways in which it can be interpreted”. Based on the aim above,
we can make a concluding that this book objective/aim is it will provide us literature
discussion that can be several ways for improving the readers interpreting skill due to variety
topics and english literature discussions.

One reason literature matters is longevity as a practice and an art form. In this book,
we have drawn on a wide variety of example from different periods, because the serious
study of literature demands historical awareness literature has changed over the centuries and
will probably change again unsurprisingly, what is understood or defined as literature has
changed as well. All of the literary examples are drawn from easily accessible sources either
standard and familiar editions or widely available anthologies such as those published by
Narton and Longman.

Then based on another aim from the author, it can appear our reaction that why the
author said this book has variety discussion, because actually this book’s contents was mixed
by wide variety and example taking by different period. It is meant, the topic and literature in
this book was upgraded or in the other word had taken up to date in new period like right
now, due to litearature’s convertment by several century make us aware. If we can choose the
best one English literature book was upgraded in modern period/the least up to date.

Thus, the benefits, using this book we can realize how to learn English literature
types. And we will acquire up to date the discussion about English literature in the least
update. Something interesting from this book is the book’s content was from different
period. I think, it will attempt for getting good response by the learners
 BAB II
DEFINITION AND DISCUSSION
I. Definition of Poetry

As we know poetry is a part from English literature. If you find other source of
literature in the book’s content must be involved by poetry discussion and this element will
be explained through this book. So this paper’s section will tell about what poetry is? How
does it work? And whole discussion about poetry. The first one, I want to write what poetry
is? Poery is mode of language uses marked by high degree of verbal patterning, or design
poetry . Manipulates language more intensely than any other kind of literature and poems
mostly achieve this through being set in verse.

A vital aspect of poetry is what we call lexis or diction. These are technical terms for
word choice. Language is comprised of an overlapping, multitude of idioms. The words have
distinct but changeable personalitie, always pre loaded with cultural associations and value.

Based on the a little bit discussion above, l took more comprehending in poetry
aspects. Beause based on the explanation above, Poetry has a vital aspects. It’s called “Lexis
or diction”. What’s lexis? Lexis or diction is Selection of patterned sound and as usual as in
poetry has another component, it’s called “Rhythm”. So, what’s Rhythm? Rhythm is a
repeatition generally being a part in Poetry expression.

manipulates both the specific meanings and looser associations of words, is alert to
their historical provenance and social domain, while it also plays with their pure sound as
athing- in- itself. But most importantly, words in poems exist, and influence one another, in
orchestrated relation, never in isolation.

Based on a brief clarification above I obtained a spesific mean that Poetry can be a
way for drawing an ilustration in mind when the poetry is read by someone with persist word
stress and intonation. As usual as done, many people who felt difficult for differring Poetry
and poem. Generally, the two are in one aspect in using stanzas, rhythm, and also diction.
So, how to clarify it? As we know as usual as done, it’s not difficult for us to differ
between poetry and poem. If in Indonesia Poem is “Pantun”, in english literature “Poem” is a
part of poetry. Fof example if there is an Indonesia poem like:
“Apa bila ada sumur di ladang, bolehlah kita menumpang mandi...
Kalau ada umur yang panjang, bolehlah kita berjumpa lagi...”
 BAB III
SUMMARY OF CONTENT

Poetry: An Introduction
In 1595, Sir Philip Sidney argued the end of poetry was to ‘teach and delight’,
echoing the Roman poet Horace from about 1,600 years earlier (Sidney, ‘Defence of Poesy’,
217; Horace 90). Since then, as before, many different kinds of poem have been written.
Indeed, there are so many types of poem, and so many diverging concepts of what poetry is,
that we should always take definitions of it with a pinch of salt. Differing poems from
differing epochs and cultures amount to a kaleidoscope of contrasting ideas about the nature
of language, art, individuality, consciousness, society, politics, history, existence, reality and
so on.

Metre and Rhythm

A general introduction to the subject of metre and rhythm might usefully begin by
saying that English verse is, in its most basic form, a succession of syllables. Some of these
syllables will take a strong emphasis (they will be stressed, in other words); others will take a
much lighter emphasis. What we call metre is set up by the way in which the heavily stressed
syllables interact with the more lightly stressed syllables. The metrical units in which heavily
and more lightly stressed syllables interact are called feet. There are many diff erent types of
feet that constitute the metrical patterns of the poems that you will read. You will probably
know the names of some of them: the iamb (da dum), the trochee (dum da), the anapaest (da
dadum), the dactyl (dum da da), the amphibrach (da dum da) and so on.

Verse Forms
If rhythm and metre are the building blocks of poetry then verse forms are its
architectural structure. Using some of the terms introduced in the previous two chapters by
Alan Gillis and Lee Spinks, we will see how the effects and usages of metre and rhyme grow
into larger shapes. ‘Verse form’ is quite a general category. It includes the technical
combination of the length of the poem, its divisions into sections, its rhyme scheme and its
metre. A sonnet, for example, has fourteen lines and it rhymes in one of a number of patterns.
Some verse forms have regular patterns of lines, rhymes and stanzas but do not have special
names. Some poems do not rhyme and do not have regular patterns of lines, but they still
have form.
Poetic Imagery
Why might female beauty be likened to a whale bone? This is the extraordinary image
presented in the opening of this anonymous lyric poem from the fi fteenth century. It seems
strange to measure human beauty by a thing no longer living, and of gigantic proportion. The
image stands out oddly in a poem in which the speaker is clearly flattering his beloved; after
all, she is then compared to the perfection of a brightly inset rosary bead and to a turtle dove,
a bird which symbolises love. In fact, the whale bone image was not uncommon in medieval
love poetry: suggestive of rarity, whiteness and sharp clarity it could be used to mirror ideas
about the ideal beauty of a woman’s skin. Though we, as contemporary readers, might puzzle
at its incongruity, we can still recognise its effectiveness as it forces two diff erent images
into unlikely juxtaposition. An arresting opening image pulls us into the poem’s world,
making us more keenly alive to further worlds of possible meanings which even the smallest
of lyric poems contains.

Poetry and History

This chapter will illustrate analysis of this kind, as well as some of the more
traditional forms of historicist criticism, in relation particularly to a period not necessarily
widely familiar to readers or students – the ‘early modern’ period of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It is worth beginning, though, by recognising that recent re- emphases
on historical reading have made ‘always historicise’ a kind of general rallying cry heard in all
sorts of ways across the field of literary study. It has led to some powerful re- readings\ of
canonical texts, and to the realization that texts and genres once dismissed by scholars as
unimportant were actually extraordinarily powerful at the time they were created.
Historicist critics have, for example, been increasingly sensitive not only to what texts
say, but also to what they are conspicuously not saying, to those topics on which a poem is
conspicuously, perhaps suspiciously, silent. How is it, for example, that Geoff rey Chaucer
could write thousands of lines of verse on social issues in his House of Fame (1378–80) or
The Canterbury Tales (1388–1400) and not reflect upon the series of profound political crises
that shook England in the wake of the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, in which several of his
friends and associates lost their lives? Does his apparent avoidance of these events (save for a
brief, flippant allusion to the peasants’ rising in his Nuns’ Priest’s Tale), while fellow poets
John Gower and William Langland seemed obsessed with them, suggest that he was
indifferent to the issues they raised? Or was he too cowed by fear or ambition to voice his
views?
Vernacular Poetry
‘Words strain,’ T. S. Eliot tells us in ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936); they ‘will not stay in
place, / Will not stay still’. He could well be describing the effect of the vernacular on
language at large. With diff erent meanings accumulated over time, the term ‘vernacular’
stems from the Latin vern[a]cul- us, meaning ‘domestic, native, indigenous’. This in turn
derives from verna, the term for a slave born on his master’s estate, who is thus classed as a
native but not a citizen of the place. So we might say a relationship of power and
subordination is inscribed in the word ‘vernacular’ from the beginning, and that uses of it
have been developing and redefining that relationship ever since.
One definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘the informal, colloquial, or
distinctive speech of a people or a group’. As such, ‘vernacular’ moves from country or
national- territorial application to social class and regional locality, and includes the
transforming extension of speech (orality) into writing (literacy). This chapter briefly surveys
the evolution of the vernacular, in relation to the historical development of English literature,
and culture more generally, before looking more closely at forms of vernacular writing
appearing in recent works.
 BAB IV
ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION
Poetry: An Introduction
In the beginning discussion from this book is information about the introduction of
Poetry. This Chapter talked about historical development about the written of Poetry then
explained completely by the auhor. The main idea from this chapter is I took info that In
1595, Sir Philip Sidney argued the end of poetry was to ‘teach and delight’, echoing the
Roman poet Horace from about 1,600 years earlier.

Metre and Rhythm

Based on the brief discussion above, Twogeneal discussion of subject “Poetry”
involve Metre and Rhythm. What’s difference of metre and rhythm? Lets me explain
it. rhythm is the general term, applying to all speech, in every language, as well as sounds in
general, provided the sounds are continuous or repetitive, and show some pattern in their
continuity or repetition. Music is a good example; it has rhythms, but no meter. Meter, on the
other hand, in the sense intended (there are plenty of others), applies strictly to poetry (or
vocal song), and refers to certain specific repetitive patterns of syllables, in a particular
language.

Verse Forms
This book also involve discussion about verse forms in English poetry. In my view
the verse forms discussion of this book was complete. The whole discussion in this chapter
will discuss about the technical combination of the length of the poem, its divisions into
sections, its rhyme scheme and its metre.

Poetic Imagery
Another discussion of this book is poetic imagery. Lets see the following discussion
“The image stands out oddly in a poem in which the speaker is clearly flattering his beloved;
after all, she is then compared to the perfection of a brightly inset rosary bead and to a turtle
dove, a bird which symbolises love.”. Based on the brief explanation above that I rewrite
from this book’s discussion we can obtain main topic of this chapter’s mean. It’s mean
“Poetic Imagery” is a part of Poetry that will provide us or attempt for making imagination
like something matter (things or people) when we read a Poetry because it’s a Poetry’s
special characterictic .
 Poetry and History
One special of this book’s discussion is complete Poetry and its history available. “it
involves the more traditional forms of historicist criticism, in relation particularly to a period
not necessarily widely familiar to readers or students – the ‘early modern’ period of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is worth beginning, though, by recognising that recent
re- emphases on historical reading have made ‘always historicise’ a kind of general rallying
cry heard in all sorts of ways across the field of literary study.” Based on the brief
explanation above this chapter will tell you historical improvement or kinds of Poetry started
from traditional era till modern era.

Vernacular Poetry
“This chapter briefly surveys the evolution of the vernacular, in relation to the historical
development of English literature, and culture more generally, before looking more closely at
forms of vernacular writing appearing in recent works.”Based on the brief explanation above
from the book , l can take a mean that this chapter will tell us about the relation of English
historical development in english literature and its culture more generally.
 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESS

1. Strenghts
1. The topic about poetry was explanained on detail by the author.
2. There are discussion about Poetry completely with the detail direction.
3. The example of Poetry increadibly put in each topics discussion.
4. It’s not just about the glimps discussion about Poetry but it’s a long discussion about
poetry that provide the new and detail poetry mastery to me.
5. Although this book’s section is only 4 section available but each the section was divided
beibg several detail discussion.

2. Weakness
The weakness of this book actually it’s not in its discussion or materials but the
weakness in in the difficult to understand the main topic what the book talked about.
I think native speakers afford to understand the long discussion with non familiar
vocabulary but it’s something difficult to me to undeerstand many strange and non familiar
Vocabulary And the another weaknesss of this book is its marks written. There are losing
mark word in its discussion.
 BAB V
CONCUSION AND SUGGESTION

Conclusion
Having studied this book, l am aware if there are kinds of Poetry started from its
historical discussion till all complete Poetry’s aspects. I felt great with this book due to the
detail discussion in each its Topic. this book is recommended fo us especially an University
students who want to improve our English Poetry understanding.
And then being a part of english literature, By learning literature, the readers can
know the picture that is actually true about life in this world. Besides, the reader can also
learn the important issues of life. When reading the literary work, the readers can feel in the
situation of the story.

Suggestion
Suggestion Concerning the learning of literature, the writer suggests that learning
literature,especially novel, should be done by understanding it the same as learning life. It is
because novel concerns a lot with human life and their problems. The conclusion of this study
reveals that in this world, there are still the other mental-retarded persons, who need help. In
this case, the writer suggests that people should give special attention to the mental-retarded
persons.
After analyzing the characters in the novel, the writer suggests that the following
readers can analyze the characters through the personality state of the characters, the actions
of the characters, the utterances of the characters, and what the author says about the
characters.