Inescapable romance

Defining "romance" as a form that simultaneously seeks and postpones a particular end, revelation, or object, Patricia Parker interprets its implications and transformations in the works of four major poets--Ariosto, Spenser, Milton, and Keats. In placing the texts within their literary and historical contexts, Professor Parker provides at once a literary history of romance as genre, a fresh reading of individual poems, and an exploration of the continuing romance of figurative language itself.