Trivia, the art of walking the streets of London, John Gay & Dr Johnson's London

Description: Trivia or the art of walking the streets of London, & Dr Johnson's London, 1807Bound in leather with gilt borders and decoration to spineWith 5 raised bandsMarbled endpapersWear and slight loss to spine, edges and cornersBoards are markedMissing marbled fly-leaf at frontFoxing to frontispiece and surrounding pages, elsewhere slightly foxed First published 1716 John Gay's Trivia, or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) is the most vital from a large clutch of early eighteenth century 'art of' poems which worked in that instructional space forever opened up by Virgil's Georgics. It is a work which stands well beside the other Scriblerian poems which are more often read and remarked upon, the poems of Swift and Pope, and in fact it complements their achievements in many ways: Gay's multi-layered ironies have been too much blanked out as less substantial compared to their satires. Trivia (the three ways, the crossroads, the place where the poet scratches out a song) is a London poem of resolutely public matter, a series of street portraits, a mock classical overlay, an ironic song in praise of emerging structures of order. Book II (of 3) opens: THUS far the Muse has trac’d in useful Lays, The proper Implements for Wintry Ways; Has taught the Walker, with judicious Eyes, To read the various Warnings of the Skies. Now venture, Muse, from Home, to range the Town, And for the publick Safety risque thy own. Its couplets are sprung with a bounce that is always sure of its contents, footnoting along. Its humour, while always funny rather than shockingly savage, is however never airily disengaged but is mixed with a lot of mud, sewage, the showing of economic networks, and the constant threat of violence. It is a poem which has been cut into pieces, not only in anthologies but in volumes such as the current Carcanet Selected Gay, despite its hardly being that long, while also standing as Gay's best poem and a key London poem

Price: 150 GBP

Location: Brighton

End Time: 2024-10-23T16:40:42.000Z

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