Seven Metaphysical Poets: A Structural Study of the Unchanging SelfOxford University Press, 2000 - 369 ページ Robert Ellrodt's study of seven poets--springing from his wide-ranging three-volume work, Les Po tes m taphysiques anglais--challenges the postmodernist assumption that no definite or constant self can be traced in the works of a writer. Distinct modes of self-awareness, different emphases in the perception of time and space, and various ways of grasping the sensible and the spiritual, the human and the divine, jointly or separately characterize the minds of Donne and George Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan, Lord Herbert, Marvell, and Traherne. Fundamental mental structures affect their attitudes to love, death, and God, and dictate their privileged modes of composition and expression. Without neglecting the relations between these individual traits and the general evolution of thought from classical antiquity to the Renaissance, or the immediate cultural environment in which each poet wrote, this critical study maintains the primacy of individual choice, of the "unchanging self." The book is not based on a theory, but on a close scrutiny of the characteristic interplay of personal modes of thought and sensibility. |
多く使われている語句
abstract Andrew Marvell appear Appleton House apprehension assertion awareness beauty bifold natures body Centuries Christ Christian conception concrete consciousness contemplation contrast Crashaw creation death distinction divine Donne and George Donne's doth Elegie emotion Enneads Essays eternity evoked experience expression Extasie eyes feeling George Herbert God's Heaven Henry Vaughan Holy Sonnet human Hymn idea imagination immortality Incarnation individual infinite infinity inner instant intuition John Donne light literary London Lord Herbert lovers Marvell Marvell's metaphysical Metaphysical poets mind modes Montaigne Mount of Olives mystery mystic Neoplatonic notion object paradoxes Paris passion perception philosophic Platonic Plotinus poems poet poet's Poètes métaphysiques poetic present pure R. V. Young reality religious Renaissance Resurrection revealed Richard Crashaw satires Second Anniversary seems Select Meditations self-consciousness sensation sense sensibility Sermons soul space spiritual Sunne symbol thee theme theology things Thomas Thomas Traherne thou thought tion Traherne Traherne's Vaughan