Theodore Powys's Gods and Demons

Theodore Powys's Gods and Demons

Author: Zouheir Jamoussi

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-08-17

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1443899119

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The life of Theodore Francis Powys, the man and the writer (1875–1953), is a story of determined withdrawal from the contemporary world. While his two literary brothers John Cowper and Llewellyn travelled a great deal abroad, Theodore, after early unsuccessful attempts to join the active world, settled into a sedentary life in a remote rural part of Dorset. In his retreat, protected from the outside world by his omnipresent hills, Powys constructed a world, half-real and half-imaginary, in which the man and the writer, reality and fancy and past and present coexisted and sometimes merged. For Powys, fear in its various manifestations, as fear of God, of evil, of death and of self, was a powerful incentive to write and a source of inspiration for almost everything remarkable in his writings. It did not take Powys long to realize that allegory was a literary genre better suited to his literary leanings and peculiar turn of mind than the realism of his early novel-writing ventures. Under the combined influence of the Bible, Bunyan and Hawthorne, he adapted allegory to his specific literary purpose. In that regard, two distinctive aspects of his allegorical stories, namely supernatural visitors and animal symbolism, generally overlooked by his critics, deserve close attention, and are the special focus of this book. Few writers have been so strongly and avowedly marked by so many literary and philosophical influences as Powys. These range from the Bible, Bunyan and Hawthorne to Darwin, Hardy, Lawrence and Freud. However, Powys’s short stories, fables and novels also stand as a unique and original achievement. Indeed, the influence he himself exerted on some novelists of the younger generation, such as William Golding, testifies to the power and originality of his writings.


Theodore Powys's Gods and Demons

Theodore Powys's Gods and Demons

Author: Zouheir Jamoussi

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781443894357

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The life of Theodore Francis Powys, the man and the writer (18751953), is a story of determined withdrawal from the contemporary world. While his two literary brothers John Cowper and Llewellyn travelled a great deal abroad, Theodore, after early unsuccessful attempts to join the active world, settled into a sedentary life in a remote rural part of Dorset. In his retreat, protected from the outside world by his omnipresent hills, Powys constructed a world, half-real and half-imaginary, in which the man and the writer, reality and fancy and past and present coexisted and sometimes merged. For Powys, fear in its various manifestations, as fear of God, of evil, of death and of self, was a powerful incentive to write and a source of inspiration for almost everything remarkable in his writings. It did not take Powys long to realize that allegory was a literary genre better suited to his literary leanings and peculiar turn of mind than the realism of his early novel-writing ventures. Under the combined influence of the Bible, Bunyan and Hawthorne, he adapted allegory to his specific literary purpose. In that regard, two distinctive aspects of his allegorical stories, namely supernatural visitors and animal symbolism, generally overlooked by his critics, deserve close attention, and are the special focus of this book. Few writers have been so strongly and avowedly marked by so many literary and philosophical influences as Powys. These range from the Bible, Bunyan and Hawthorne to Darwin, Hardy, Lawrence and Freud. However, Powyss short stories, fables and novels also stand as a unique and original achievement. Indeed, the influence he himself exerted on some novelists of the younger generation, such as William Golding, testifies to the power and originality of his writings.


The Contemporary Novel

The Contemporary Novel

Author: Irving Adelman

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13:

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In this new edition, what was already an expansive work has been updated and further enlarged to include information not only on American and British novelists but also on writers in English from around the world.


DESCENTS OF MEMORY

DESCENTS OF MEMORY

Author: Morine Krissdottir

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Published: 2007-09-06

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13:

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John Cowper Powys's works have been described as 'the only novels produced by an English writer that can fairly be compared to the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky ? with an immensity to which only Blake could provide a parallel in English literature' (George Steiner, The New Yorker). His talents were manifested by such books as his Autobiography, Wolf Solent, Weymouth Sands, and A Glastonbury Romance.In this, Powys's first comprehensive biography, eminent scholar Morine Krissdottir delves into the life of the writer, from his childhood in Derbyshire through his celebrated lecture tours through England and the US; from his life's loves to his relationship with his own writing. Krissdottir demonstrates that Powys - known as much for his essays, letters, poetry, and philosophy as he was for his fiction - was a man whose writing had a scope matched only by the breadth of his life. Using primary sources, never-before-seen archival materials (including photos), and Powys's own writings, Krissdottir pieces together this life in a way that will be impossible to forget