The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature and Ideas

Geoffrey Hill, one of England’s premier poets, analyzes the nature of poetry and language in this collection of nine essays. It is rare for the poet and the scholar to meet on equal terms within one mind. In The Lords of Limit, the poet with his scrupulous precision, intricately allusive use of immense resources of learning, and witty conciseness, continues to illuminate his own nature even as the scholar is illuminating his subjects. In this erudite collection Hill ranges across the history of poetry and criticism from Shakespeare to the present, look at Robert Southwell, Jonathan Swift, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ben Johnson, John Crowe Ransom, and T. H. Green. Ethical and politician issues are interwoven with questions of literature in this highly original assessment of poets and poetry. Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (1932 – 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation and was called the "greatest living poet in the English language." From 2010 to 2015 he held the position of Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Presented with the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2009 for his Collected Critical Writings and the publication of Broken Hierarchies (Poems 1952–2012), Hill is recognized as one of the principal contributors to poetry in the 20th and 21st centuries.