Rhyme and Reason
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Rhyme and Reason
Pre-order for $18.12
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
-
Mark Forsyth
About this listen
Some people worry that they don't appreciate poetry; but English poetry wasn't written to be appreciated it was written to be enjoyed. For six centuries people have been reading poetry for enjoyment—for fun, for romance, for religion and for entertainment—and this is a book about those people.
What was it like to be sent a Tudor love sonnet? And how did you reply? What did people think of Wordsworth or Chaucer before they were put on pedestals? What was it like to read poetry back in the days when you didn't have to write an essay on it afterwards?
Rhyme and Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, through Byromania and the Victorian hearth, understanding why people simply enjoyed poetry. From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.