Author: Kathleen Raine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136663940
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
First published in 1979, this is a very welcome reissue of Kathleen Raine's seminal study of William Blake - England’s only prophet. He challenged with extraordinary vigour the premises which now underline much of Western civilization, hitting hard at the ideas of a naive materialist philosophy which, even in his own day, was already eating at the roots of English national life. In his insistence that ‘mental things are alone real’, Blake was ahead of his time. Materialist views are now challenged from various quarters; the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung, the study of Far Easter religion and philosophy, the reappraisal of myth and folk lore, the wealth of psychical research have all prepared the way for an understanding of Blake’s thought. We are ready to acknowledge that in attacking ‘the sickness of Albion’ Blake penetrated to the inner worlds of man and explored them in a way that is quite unique. Dr Raine, who has made a long study of Blake’s sources, presents him as a lonely powerful genius who stands within the spiritual tradition of Sophia Perennis, ‘the Everlasting Gospel’. From the standpoint of this great human Norm, our immediate past described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the three provincial centuries’, is a tragic deviation; catastrophic, as Blake believed, in its spiritual and material consequences. Only now do we possess the necessary knowledge to understand William Blake and the ever-growing number of people who turn to him surely justifies his faith in the eternal truths he strove to communicate.
Author: Kathleen Raine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136663959
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
First published in 1979, this is a very welcome reissue of Kathleen Raine's seminal study of William Blake - England’s only prophet. He challenged with extraordinary vigour the premises which now underline much of Western civilization, hitting hard at the ideas of a naive materialist philosophy which, even in his own day, was already eating at the roots of English national life. In his insistence that ‘mental things are alone real’, Blake was ahead of his time. Materialist views are now challenged from various quarters; the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung, the study of Far Easter religion and philosophy, the reappraisal of myth and folk lore, the wealth of psychical research have all prepared the way for an understanding of Blake’s thought. We are ready to acknowledge that in attacking ‘the sickness of Albion’ Blake penetrated to the inner worlds of man and explored them in a way that is quite unique. Dr Raine, who has made a long study of Blake’s sources, presents him as a lonely powerful genius who stands within the spiritual tradition of Sophia Perennis, ‘the Everlasting Gospel’. From the standpoint of this great human Norm, our immediate past described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the three provincial centuries’, is a tragic deviation; catastrophic, as Blake believed, in its spiritual and material consequences. Only now do we possess the necessary knowledge to understand William Blake and the ever-growing number of people who turn to him surely justifies his faith in the eternal truths he strove to communicate.
Author: Laura Dabundo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135232350
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 686
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Book Description
First Published in 1992, this encyclopedia is designed to survey the social, cultural and intellectual climate of English Romanticism from approximately the 1780s and the French Revolution to the 1830s and the Reform Bill. Focussing on ‘the spirit of the age’, the book deals with the aesthetic, scientific, socioeconomic – indeed the human – environment in which the Romantics flourished. The books considers poets, playwrights and novelists; critics, editors and booksellers; painters, patrons and architects; as well as ideas, trends, fads, and conventions, the familiar and the newly discovered. The book will be of use for everyone from undergraduate English students, through to thesis-driven graduate students to teaching faculty and scholars.
Author: Murray Pittock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317629523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
The 1890s, the Naughty Nineties, was an exciting and flamboyant time in British life and literature. First published in 1993, this title traces the genesis of the literary culture of the 1890s through some of the popular novels and literary texts of the period. By examining works by such writers as Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, and Walter Pater, Murray Pittock analyses the nature of the ‘Decadent era’ and the artistic theories of Symbolism and Aestheticism. Significantly, he provides a full assessment of the lasting impact that the thought of the period has had on our own understanding of our cultural past. Spectrum of Decadence explores the confrontations between art and science, sex and mortality, desire and virtue, which, the author argues are as much a part of modern society’s fin-de-siécle as they were of the nineteenth century’s. This reissue bridges the gap between literary texts, historical context, and contemporary critical theory.
Author: Christopher Thacker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317235835
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
First published in 1983. This book charts the growth of Romanticism from the initial reactions to the authoritarian classicism of Louis XIV, through the ‘codification’ of the Sublime by Burke in the 1750s, to the fascination with mystery, fear and violence which dominated the writing of the late eighteenth century. The origins of the movement are found in the writings of Rousseau and admiration for the ‘noble savage’, the development of the landscape garden, discoveries in the South Seas, new approaches to ‘primitive’ poetry and enthusiasm for gothic art and literature. These attitudes are contrasted with the more classical views of writers like Samuel Johnson.
Author: Thomas Rice Henn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136472274
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
First published in 1965, this reissue of the second edition of T. R. Henn’s seminal study offers an impressive breadth and depth of meditations on the poetry of W. B. Yeats. His life and influences are discussed at length, from the impact of the Irish Rebellion upon his youth, to his training as a painter, to the influence of folklore, occultism and Indian philosophy on his work. Henn seeks out the many elements of Yeats’ famously complex personality, as well as analysing the dominant symbols of his work, and their ramifications.
Author: Herbert Read
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317428277
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
This anthology, first published in 1939, aimed to present the English ideal in its various aspects as expressed by representative Englishmen. This book will be of interest to students of literature and to the general reader.
Author: Sir Frank Kermode
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317555724
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Continuities, first published in 1968, is a collection of reviews by Frank Kermode that appeared from 1962 to 1967. Kermode discusses a variety of novelists, poets, and critics, including T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Wallace Stevens, Edmund Wilson, and Wallace Stevens. History and politics are two important aspects that are discussed in regards to these writers. This book is ideal for students of English literature.
Author: B. Ifor Evans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351386158
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
First published in 1933, this study, which underwent revision in the 1960s, is a comprehensive survey of the verse of English nineteenth-century poets whose work appeared after 1860. A special feature is the full and critical treatment of minor writers. In no other book is their work so carefully evaluated. There is a full account of the minor Pre-Raphaelites, of James Thomson, the poet of The City of Dreadful Night, of Henley, Stevenson and George MacDonald. John Davidson is the subject of a long and revealing study. Evans suggests that poetry from the late nineteenth century is neglected in scholarly study, and that Victorian Romanticism deserves more attention than it has recently received.
Author: David Scott Fox
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317702484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
Mediterranean Heritage, first published in 1978, offers a wide-ranging and perceptive discussion of the often concealed links between English culture and the common heritage of Western Europe: the Graeco-Roman legacy of the Mediterranean. There seems to have been no time when England has not been in touch with the civilisations of Greece and Italy: even Stonehenge, the most dramatic survivor of our remotest past, has a carved dagger of Mycenaean pattern among its ornaments. The pioneers of a distinctly English creative vision – Shakespeare, Sidney, Milton – clearly looked to Italy. Throughout the eighteenth century ‘grand tourists’ found southern Europe irresistible. The Romantics all became enraptured by the Mediterranean, and passed on their fascination in some of the most passionate poetry in English. Appearing at a time which England is more obviously a part of Europe than she has been for sixteen hundred years, Mediterranean Heritage provides valuable insights into the origins of our culture’s greatest achievements.
