Background
Fraser, Russell Alfred was born on May 31, 1927 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States. Son of Roger John and Mary Louise (Narden) Fraser.
( Singing Masters is a book for connoisseurs of poetry. I...)
Singing Masters is a book for connoisseurs of poetry. It spans five centuries of verse in English, but it is in no way a literary history or encyclopedic survey of the genre. It is instead a celebration of the poetry that has most delighted, engaged, and challenged one man over his long and distinguished career as literary scholar and critic. Russell Fraser's focus is on seventeen poets, including chapters on Donne, Herrick, Wordsworth, Milton, Shelley, and Marvell, with reference to many other poets along the way. The effort is not to be comprehensive, or even chronological (as the author points out, poetry, unlike the sciences, does not get better and better), but to record the impact of poetry on one man's sensibility, necessarily different from anyone else's. The account is personal--the distillation of a lifetime's experience. However, paying close attention to previous critics, Singing Masters is not impressionistic. The title comes from Yeats, a poet who wanted his predecessors to be the "singing masters" of his soul. Similarly, author Russell Fraser pays homage to his predecessors among the major critics. He doesn't read his poets in a vacuum, but locates them in their lives and times while simultaneously focusing on the work itself. In this book, the poem is the thing, and the basic questions explored are language-centered: what kind of poem is before the reader and whether it succeeds and why. Russell Fraser is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he held the Austin Warren Chair in English Literature and Language from 1983-95. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including a two-volume biography of Shakespeare; a biography of R. P. Blackmur; The Dark Ages and the Age of Gold; The Language of Adam: On the Limits and Systems of Discourse; Shakespeare's Poetics; and The Three Romes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472110039/?tag=2022091-20
(This volume continues and completes the biography that be...)
This volume continues and completes the biography that began with "Young Shakespeare", tracing the playwright's life from the writing of "Romeo and Juliet" to his death in 1616. The text follows Shakespeare and his company around London, immersing the reader in Elizabethan court gossip.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231067674/?tag=2022091-20
( The attack on poetry and the theater which occurred in ...)
The attack on poetry and the theater which occurred in England during the 16th and 17th centuries has been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations. This "war against poetry" was, in Professor Fraser's view, part of a larger cultural movement: the disengagement of the modern world from its medieval antecedents. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691061904/?tag=2022091-20
(Examines Shakespeare's life up to age thirty, describes e...)
Examines Shakespeare's life up to age thirty, describes everyday life in England during this period, and discusses the historical context of his writings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023106764X/?tag=2022091-20
( In this original and provocative book Russell Fraser ha...)
In this original and provocative book Russell Fraser has set himself no less a task than the description and interpretation of one of the signal "facts" of Western history--the breaking away of the present from the medieval past. He locates this break in England in the sixteenth century, and on the continent two hundred years earlier. Unafraid to synthesize, he weaves a rich fabric of quotations, allusions, and examples from art, music, philosophy, theology, and physical science to explain the cultural transition to the modern world. Although the author ranges from Plato to the present, his focus is concentrated on the major figures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially Shakespeare, "the last and greatest of medieval artists." His intention is always to draw together and compare medieval. Renaissance, and contemporary attitudes so that the reader can see the past becoming the present, how and when this transformation occurred, and for what reasons. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691062161/?tag=2022091-20
(This biography of the playwright's first 30 years places ...)
This biography of the playwright's first 30 years places him firmly in the setting of Renaissance England and selects various scenes of his life. Numerous quotations from Shakespeare's plays appear throughout the text to illustrate his growth and development.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231067658/?tag=2022091-20
( R. P. Blackmur was an American critic and poet, as well...)
R. P. Blackmur was an American critic and poet, as well as a professor of English literature and creative writing at Princeton University. At the time of his death, he had completed five books and a number of plays and short stories. His poetry mattered most to him and some of it is permanent work. He devoted much of his life to a biography of Henry Adams, someone he saw in himself. In his lifetime, he received his share of adulation, but he was not successful in the way that success is commonly measured. In this work, Russell Fraser follows the course of Blackmur's self-declared failed genius. He tells the story of his precocious youth in Cambridge; his eclectic education; his years of poverty and renown as a poet, novelist, freelance music critic, and essayist; his obsessive marriage to artist Helen Dickson; his entangled friendships with T. S. Eliot, Delmore Schwartz, Allen Tate, and John Berryman; and his passion for rural Maine on the Tidal Water. He discusses Blackmur's crucial role in the literary magazines of the twenties and thirties; his unique influence as instructor of creative writing; the emotional and professional price he paid for a doubtful security at Princeton University; and the torment of wavering between intellectual inertia and prolific inspiration. With empathy and insight, Fraser shows how the trajectory of Blackmur's career parallels the movements in the American literary scene; the experiments in poetry and fiction; the development of the New Criticism; the writer's conflict between order and anarchy, taxonomy and the full response; and the emergence of the critic as artist. A biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, A Mingled Yarn unravels Blackmur's complex character and celebrates his great achievement.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412814472/?tag=2022091-20
Fraser, Russell Alfred was born on May 31, 1927 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States. Son of Roger John and Mary Louise (Narden) Fraser.
Bachelor of Arts, Dartmouth College, 1947; Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1949; Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1950.
Instructor English, University of California at Los Angeles, 1950; postgraduate study, England, 1951-1952; instructor, then assistant Professor of English, Duke U., 1952-1956; assistant professor, then associate Professor of English, Princeton University, 1956-1965; associate dean Graduate School, Princeton University, 1962-1965; professor, chairman English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 1965-1968; Professor of English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, since 1968; department chairman, University of Michigan, 1968-1973; Austin Warren professor, University of Michigan, 1983-1995; professor emeritus, University of Michigan, since 1995. Resident Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, 1976.
( In this original and provocative book Russell Fraser ha...)
( In this original and provocative book Russell Fraser ha...)
(This volume continues and completes the biography that be...)
( The attack on poetry and the theater which occurred in ...)
(Examines Shakespeare's life up to age thirty, describes e...)
(This biography of the playwright's first 30 years places ...)
("Shakespeare: The Later Years" continues and completes th...)
( The only surviving anthology of non-Shakespearean Engl...)
( Singing Masters is a book for connoisseurs of poetry. I...)
( R. P. Blackmur was an American critic and poet, as well...)
Served with United States Naval Reserve, 1944-1946. Member Renaissance Society American, Shakespeare Association American, Caledonian Society of Hawaii, Harvard Club of Michigan.
Married Eleanor Jane Phillips, May 31, 1947 (divorced 1979). Children– Karen Mildred, Alexander Varennes. Married Mary Nelva Zwiep, July 5, 1980.