Anne Carson

Anne Carson: The Glass Essayist is the first monograph devoted to the critical study of the acclaimed poet, scholar, and translator, Anne Carson. The book covers a wide range of Carson's writing and performance work, combining close critical analysis with wider-angle commentary on the contemporary significance and originality of Carson's project. The book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students of contemporary literature, poetics, literary theory, performance, and classics, and to educated lay readers interested in getting to grips with the complex interplay of original composition and critical response -- playing with the limits of poetry, narrative, translation, and academic essays -- in the work of this extraordinary contemporary author.

Elizabeth Sarah Coles is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge. She is director of Performing the Lecture, a program of experimental lectures hosted by the CCCB, Barcelona, and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she held a fellowship from 2021 to 2024. Coles is co-editor of Wild Analysis, which won a Gradiva Award in 2022. Anne Carson: The Glass Essayist is her first book.

- A Note on the Text
- Introduction
- I. VARIATIONS IN CRITICISM
- 1. The Eros Variations
- 2. Criticism and the Gift (Carson with Celan)
- II. GLASS ESSAYS
- 3. On Not Being Emily Brontë
- 4. Lyric Transparency and the 'Fictional Essay'
- III. SPECULATIVE FORM
- 5. Decreation, or the Art of Disappearance
- 6. Fake Women
- IV. OPEN TRANSLATION
- 7. Grief Lessons (Two Stories of Translation)
- 8. Sappho in the Open
- Postscript: Short-Talking
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index