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M. H. Abrams at Cornell University

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This portrait of the legendary Mike Abrams, 97, contains a collection of news stories and photographs over the years that describe his interests – including his devotion to both teaching and scholarship and his role as citizen-at-large at Cornell and internationally. These articles provide a glimpse into Mike Abrams' role in and impact on the Cornell Community and on the larger community of scholars. We present them as a tribute to Mike Abrams in celebration of his continuing role as an inspiring teacher, a highly influential scholar and literary critic, and as a person who played a major role in defining the great literature studied by students throughout the world.

An important part of this portrait of Mike Abrams can best be told through multimedia, so this associated 2-disc DVD to complement the book, M. H. Abrams at Cornell University, has been produced so you might see and hear him giving public lectures and being interviewed.

Highlights include public lectures "On Reading Poems Aloud" and the story of how the James Joyce Collection came to Cornell, interviews about his life's work and Cornell experience, copies of several books written by or about Abrams, a biographical sketch and a current bibliography of his work, and testimonials about the significance of his work, including the Norton Anthology of English Literature. A detailed table of contents is included.

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    The Fourth Dimension of a Poem
    Abrams, Meyer H. (Finger Lakes Recording, 2010)
    M. H. Abrams is a leading authority on the 18th- and 19th-century literature, literary criticism, and European Romanticism. Now in his 65th year as a Cornell professor, Abrams has made substantial contributions to the field of English. He was founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and served as its general editor for 40 years. Abrams’ numerous publications include The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), which is ranked twenty-fifth on the Modern Library’s list of “The 100 Best Nonfiction Books Written in English during the 20th Century.
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    M. H. Abrams at Cornell University - Videos and Multimedia Presentations
    Abrams, M. H. (Internet-First University Press, 2010)
    The videos and audio files presented here are contained in the DVDs that are part of the Book "M.H. Abrams at Cornell University". The videos and audio files encompass interviews, lectures by M.H. Abrams, tributes and poetry readings.
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    M. H. Abrams at Cornell University
    Cooke, J. Robert (producer) (Internet-First University Press, 2010)
    This portrait of the legendary Mike Abrams consists of a collection of news stories and photographs over the years that describe his interests - including his devotion to both teaching and scholarship and his role as citizen-at-large at Cornell University and internationally.
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    High Romantic Argument: Essays for M.H. Abrams
    Abrams, M. H.; Hartman, Geoffrey; McFarland, Thomas; Wordsworth, Jonathan; Lipking, Lawrence; Booth, Wayne; Culler, Jonathan (Cornell University Press, 1981)
    Part 1. Visions of Wordsworth: "The poetics of prophecy" by Geoffrey Hartman (Yale University); "As with the silence of the thought" by Jonathan Wordsworth (Exeter College, Oxford)-- Part 2. The achievement of M.H. Abrams: "History as metaphor: Or, Is M.H. Abrams a mirror, or a lamb, or a fountain, or ...?" by Wayne C. Booth (University of Chicago); "Coleridgean criticism of the work of M.H. Abrams" by Thomas McFarland (Princeton University); "The genie in the lamp: M.H. Abrams and the motives of literary history" by Lawrence Lipking (Northwestern University); "The mirror stage" by Jonathan Culler (Cornell University); "A Reply" by M.H. Abrams (Cornell University); "A Bibliography of M.H. Abrams" by Stuart A. Ende (California Institute of Technology).
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    The Milk of Paradise: The Effect of Opium Visions on the Works of DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge
    Abrams, M. H. (Octagon Books, 1971)
    Four eminent English authors were addicted to opium. Each author spent a considerable part of his life in a dream world which differs amazingly from that in which we live. Each author utilized the imagery from these dreams in his literary creations, and sometimes, under the direct inspiration of opium, achieved his best writing. Thus, a knowledge of the opium world these authors inhabited is essential to a complete understanding of their work. In the cases where critics have not entirely neglected this factor, their analysis of opium effects is too often a flight of conjecture unimpeded by any burden of definite knowledge. Strangely enough, although “there is hardly a more difficult chapter in the whole of pharmacology than . . . a thoroughly exact analysis of the effects of drugs,”(Louis Lewin, Phantastica, London, 1931, Preface, p. x.) this is just the field wherein each man seems to consider himself expert. When a critic of established reputation is misled into characterizing all of Coleridge’s finest poems as “the chance brain-blooms of a season of physiological ecstasy,”(John Mackinnon Robertson, New Essays towards a Critical Method, London, 1897, p. 190) it is time to examine the facts. Accordingly, I have based my investigation of the nature of opium phenomena on the statements of habituates and the findings of psychological authorities. Moreover, since to postulate addiction to opium merely from the “abnormality” of a man’s work. although the usual method, is illogical, my approach to each of the authors under consideration is biographical. Limitations of the length allowed for this thesis have imposed limitations in subject. I have dealt with no drug but opium, except in a passing reference in the Notes. Foreign authors I have had to omit; and of English authors I have been able to treat at length only those four whose long addiction to the drug is certain: DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge. Even with these men, it has been necessary to cut down evidence to a minimum, but indications for further investigation will be found in the Notes. There is no definite proof of addiction to opium in the lives of James Thomson and Poe. In their works, too, indications of the influence of alcohol are so strong that it would be difficult to distinguish any possible effect of opium. Since the date of the inception of Coleridge’s opium habit is necessary for a determination of the influence of the drug on his great creative period, I have gathered in an appendix all the evidence available on this agitated question. To Professor Lowes I owe a great debt for the material on Coleridge in The Road to Xanadu, and for access to his photostatic reproductions of Coleridge’s manuscript Note Book. To Dr. David Worcester I am grateful for the benefit of his authoritative investigations on James Thomson. I wish to express my appreciation also to Professor Edmund B. Delabarre, of the Psychology Department of Brown University. and to Dr. Beebe-Center. for guidance in matters connected with the subject of narcotic phenomena.