Background
Bate, Andrew Jonathan was born on June 26, 1958 in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. Son of Ronald Montagu and Sylvia Helen (Tait) Bate.
( As we enter a new millennium ruled by technology, will...)
As we enter a new millennium ruled by technology, will poetry still matter? The Song of the Earth answers eloquently in the affirmative. A book about our growing alienation from nature, it is also a brilliant meditation on the capacity of the writer to bring us back to earth, our home. In the first ecological reading of English literature, Jonathan Bate traces the distinctions among "nature," "culture," and "environment" and shows how their meanings have changed since their appearance in the literature of the eighteenth century. An intricate interweaving of climatic, topographical, and political elements poetically deployed, his book ranges from greenhouses in Jane Austen's novels to fruit bats in the poetry of Les Murray, by way of Thomas Hardy's woodlands, Dr. Frankenstein's Creature, John Clare's birds' nests, Wordsworth's rivers, Byron's bear, and an early nineteenth-century novel about an orangutan who stands for Parliament. Though grounded in the English Romantic tradition, the book also explores American, Central European, and Caribbean poets and engages theoretically with Rousseau, Adorno, Bachelard, and especially Heidegger. The model for an innovative and sophisticated new "ecopoetics," The Song of the Earth is at once an essential history of environmental consciousness and an impassioned argument for the necessity of literature in a time of ecological crisis.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674008189/?tag=2022091-20
(Written by a leading Shakespeare scholar, this book is th...)
Written by a leading Shakespeare scholar, this book is the first comprehensive account of the relationship between Shakespeare and his favorite poet, Ovid. Bate examines the full range of Shakespeare's works, identifying Ovid's presence not only in the narrative poems and pastoral comedies, but also in the Sonnets and mature tragedies. Demonstrating how profoundly creative Ovid's influence was, especially in his representations of myth, metamorphosis, and sexuality, this original and elegantly written study reveals Shakespeare as an extraordinarily sophisticated reader of Ovidian myth and as a metamorphic artist as fluid and nimble as his classical original.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198183240/?tag=2022091-20
( First published in 1991, Romantic Ecology reassesses th...)
First published in 1991, Romantic Ecology reassesses the poetry of William Wordsworth in the context of the abiding pastoral tradition in English Literature. Jonathan Bate explores the politics of poetry and argues that contrary to critics who suggest that the Wordsworth was a reactionary who failed to represent the harsh economic reality of his native Lake District, the poet’s politics were fundamentally ‘green’. As our first truly ecological poet, Wordsworth articulated a powerful and enduring vision of human integration with nature which exercised a formative influence on later conservation movements and is of immediate relevance to great environmental issues today. Challenging the orthodoxies of new historicist criticism, Jonathan Bate sets a new agenda for the study of Romanticism in the 1990s.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415856655/?tag=2022091-20
(This fascinating book by one of Britain's most acclaimed ...)
This fascinating book by one of Britain's most acclaimed Shakespeare scholars explores the extraordinary staying-power of the world's most famous dramatist. Bate opens by taking up questions of authorship and then goes on to trace Shakespeare's canonization and near-deification, examining not only the uniqueness of his status among English-speaking readers but also his effect on literary cultures across the globe. Ambitious, wide-ranging, and historically rich, this book shapes a provocative inquiry into the nature of genius as it ponders the legacy of a talent unequalled in English letters. A bold and meticulous work of scholarship, The Genius of Shakespeare is also lively and accessibly written and will appeal to any reader who has marveled at the Bard and the enduring power of his work. This tenth anniversary edition has a new twenty-page afterword that addresses the renewed interest in Shakespeare and recent film adaptations of his most celebrated works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195372999/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a compelling first novel that examines the dreams...)
This is a compelling first novel that examines the dreams and reality of romantic love and the faith required between two people when they become interchangeable. An Englishman is found wandering at the foot of a rocky bank deep in the Scottish countryside. He has no memory of how he got there and no means of identification. Under the care of his doctor, Laura, 'William' - the name he adopts - begins a desperate search to recover his memory and his identity, a quest that is more complex and tortuous than either of them could have anticipated. Laura's own life begins to change as she finds herself increasingly drawn to the man they both think they are discovering. This is a rich and original exploration of an enduring theme: the search for the ideal and the inevitable and painful discovery of the self. The Cure for Love is a paperback original.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0330347314/?tag=2022091-20
(Although it is well known that the Romantics were obsesse...)
Although it is well known that the Romantics were obsessed with Shakespeare, little attention has been paid to the ways in which he influenced both their creative practices and theories of the imagination. This work presents the fascinating picture of how the Romantics read Shakespeare and the ways in which his work inspired and informed their own poetry. The book provides the first full critical discussion of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, explores the influence of the plays on the poetry of Blake and Coleridge, and offers a fresh account of Shakespeare's powerful presence in the letters and poems of Keats and Byron, and in Shelley's dramas. Taking issue with prevalent deconstructionist theories and Harold Bloom's ideas on "the anxiety of influence," Bate instead carefully illustrates the ways in which initial attempts at blind imitation were transformed into graceful poetic echo and allusion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198129947/?tag=2022091-20
Bate, Andrew Jonathan was born on June 26, 1958 in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. Son of Ronald Montagu and Sylvia Helen (Tait) Bate.
Bachelor, Cambridge University, 1980. Doctor of Philosophy, Cambridge University, 1983.
Harkness fellow Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980-1981. Research fellow St. Catharine's College, England, 1983-1985. Fellow Trinity Hall, 1985-1990.
King Alfred professor English literature University Liverpool, England, since 1991.
(Although it is well known that the Romantics were obsesse...)
(This is a compelling first novel that examines the dreams...)
( First published in 1991, Romantic Ecology reassesses th...)
(This fascinating book by one of Britain's most acclaimed ...)
(Written by a leading Shakespeare scholar, this book is th...)
( As we enter a new millennium ruled by technology, will...)
Married Paula Jayne Byrne, April 1, 1996. Children: Thomas Montague, Elinor Clare.