Paradise Lost: a Divine Comedy or Profane Bathos?
Paradise Lost: a Divine Comedy or Profane Bathos?

Author: Donald C. Bartley

Publisher: Balboa Press

Published: 2020-05-04

Total Pages: 742

ISBN-13: 198224559X

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Paradise Lost: a Divine Comedy or Profane Bathos? (, Ai-ichigen) breaks the spell, awakening the dreamer. For living in our dreams, we struggle to live in Paradise. Darwin said the origin of species was by means of natural selection, the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life; & history has borne him out. Proceeding from a faulty & partial memory, it needs repeating & constant amending; yet it renders no progress: history affirms the blind & random nature of human events! Schooled that by the labors of our native intelligence, we alone could subdue Darwin, we have made nature pay for our great industry. Our mighty institutions embrace Darwinian principles making us highly competitive through fear & separation. Love & unification we spurn to maintain our competitive edge, believing that by keeping our independence, our freedom we secure; for space & time were limited. These beliefs, being empirical, we never question. But what if Darwin was wrong? if things don’t evolve? if life were vouchsafed? For science avers that nature is lawless. It follows no rules in having no point or purpose. Positing a cosmic intelligence steering nature offends science. All the laws & meanings we find in nature are what science gives it. Yet were point & purpose never any part of this world, then how could we know them or even possess them in ourselves? & that includes our native wits. So, science concedes that life is deterministic &, promptly, reality dissolves; for life, we know to be uncertain & rife with choices. What we dare not question, this book answers. Strangers here we have become, thinking life in Paradise could ever be a struggle. Having turned fantasy into reality, Paradise is lost on us!

Chaucer's Dante
Chaucer's Dante

Author: Richard Neuse

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0520348745

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Richard Neuse here explores the relationship between two great medieval epics, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He argues that Dante's attraction for Chaucer lay not so much in the spiritual dimension of the Divine Comedy as in the human. Borrowing Bertolt Brecht's phrase "epic theater," Neuse underscores the interest of both poets in presenting, as on a stage, flesh and blood characters in which readers would recognize the authors as well as themselves. As spiritual autobiography, both poems challenge the traditional medieval mode of allegory, with its tendency to separate body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus Neuse demonstrates that Chaucer and Dante embody a humanism not generally attributed to the fourteenth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

The Well and the Shallows
The Well and the Shallows

Author: G. K. Chesterton

Publisher: Read Books Ltd

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1473376610

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One of G. K. Chesterton’s finest collection of essays, The Well and the Shallows, explore more controversial themes than typically seen in the work of the English writer. Written with Chesterton’s biting wit, he touches on various cultural, social and moral issues from birth control to Catholicism. Chesterton’s perceptive analysis of core issues within modern society remains startling relatable nearly 100 years since its publication. Written shortly after his conversion to Catholicism, he writes with tremendous foresight focusing on subjects like Catholicism, Reformation and Protestantism, and other profound writings on political and social issues based around the central theme of religion. Essays in this volume include: My Six Conversions The Return to Religion The Higher Nihilism The Ascetic At Large Babies and Distribution A Century of Emancipation Trade Terms Shocking the Modernists Sex and Property Why Protestants Prohibit Where is the Paradox? The Well and the Shallows is an insightful collection of essays on some of the most important ideas of the modernist era written by one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century. It is a perfect read for those interested in the work of G. K. Chesterton or any with a broader interest in historical, social analysis from a religious perspective.

T. S. Eliot and Dante
T. S. Eliot and Dante

Author: Dominic Manganiello

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1989-10-13

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1349202592

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Ezra Pound belatedly conceded that T.S.Eliot "was the true Dantescan voice" of the modern world. With this assertion in mind, this study examines the relationship between the two poets. It attempts to show how Dante's total vision impinges on Eliot's craft and thought.

A Mythic Journey
A Mythic Journey

Author: Edward Diller

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0813162769

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Although The Tin Drum has often been called one of the great novels of the 20th century, most critics have been baffled in attempting to draw its apparent chaos into a single literary framework. Here is the full-length study to penetrate the brilliance of Gunter Grass's style and uncover the novel's mythopoetic core. In A Mythic Journey: Gunter Grass's Tin Drum, author Edward Diller convincingly demonstrates the still valid relationship between modern and classical literary criticism. By reading The Tin Drum as both modern myth and historical epic, he provides a profound and sensitive interpretation of one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature.

Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney

Author: Elmer Andrews

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1992-06-18

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1349106828

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Written by the author of "The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper" and "Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays", this is a collection of critical essays on Seamus Heaney.

A New Handbook of Literary Terms
A New Handbook of Literary Terms

Author: David Mikics

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 030013522X

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A New Handbook of Literary Terms offers a lively, informative guide to words and concepts that every student of literature needs to know. Mikics’s definitions are essayistic, witty, learned, and always a pleasure to read. They sketch the derivation and history of each term, including especially lucid explanations of verse forms and providing a firm sense of literary periods and movements from classicism to postmodernism. The Handbook also supplies a helpful map to the intricate and at times confusing terrain of literary theory at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the author has designated a series of terms, from New Criticism to queer theory, that serves as a concise but thorough introduction to recent developments in literary study. Mikics’s Handbook is ideal for classroom use at all levels, from freshman to graduate. Instructors can assign individual entries, many of which are well-shaped essays in their own right. Useful bibliographical suggestions are given at the end of most entries. The Handbook’s enjoyable style and thoughtful perspective will encourage students to browse and learn more. Every reader of literature will want to own this compact, delightfully written guide.