It is notable that beginning with Robert Browning, it has been poets rather than critics who have been the warmest and most perceptive admirers of the poetry of Christopher Smart. In a 1975 radio broadcast in Australia, Peter Porter spoke of Smart as...

Chris Mounsey. Christopher Smart: Clown of God. (The Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture.) Cranbury, N. J.: Bucknell University Press. 2001. Pp. 342. $49.50. ISBN 0-8387-5483-X. Chris Mounsey's biography of Christopher Smart makes three extraordinary claims: first, that the content of...

Christopher Smart: Clown of God. By CHRIS MOUNSEY. (Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture) Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 342 pp. 40 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-8387-5483-x. In Jubilate Agno Smart punningly likens his 'LUNATICK' self to...

Recently, I met a man at a bar who asked me what I did. Not in the mood to split hairs over whether he meant “money” work or inner calling, I answered, apparently slurring heavily: “I work at a hedge fund. “Really? Wow, that sounds...

Recently, I met a man at a bar who asked me what I did. Not in the mood to split hairs over whether he meant “money” work or inner calling, I answered, apparently slurring heavily: “I work at a hedge fund. “Really? Wow,...

In the following essay, which was first published in 1974, Hartman addresses questions regarding the nature of verbal representation which arise from Smart's elaborate word-play in Jubilate Agno.

In the following essay, Dillingham analyzes the importance of the works of King David and Horace as models for Smart's poetry.

Stead was the discoverer and first editor of the manuscript of Jubilate Agno. The following excerpt is taken from his introduction to the first edition of the work, which he called Rejoice in the Lamb. Stead views the poem as valuable principally for the light it sheds on Smart's composition of A Song to David.