In the Spirit of Powys: New EssaysDenis Lane Bucknell University Press, 1990 - 268 pages This work is a collection of essays on the work of John Cowper Powys, the English novelist and Nobel nominee. The critical intention of these essays is to provide a picture of Powys's achievement. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 76
Page 10
... Characters multiply and drive each other from the center of attention — or rather they drive each other to their own various centers of attention . The further we pro- ceed into his books the more we realize that we have entered a field ...
... Characters multiply and drive each other from the center of attention — or rather they drive each other to their own various centers of attention . The further we pro- ceed into his books the more we realize that we have entered a field ...
Page 19
... characters bound up in a state of " deep contemplative tension , " each calling upon the will's " unbounded power over secret and private reactions , " and each in his own creative manner fulfilling the Powys credo , as expressed in The ...
... characters bound up in a state of " deep contemplative tension , " each calling upon the will's " unbounded power over secret and private reactions , " and each in his own creative manner fulfilling the Powys credo , as expressed in The ...
Page 31
... characters of modern fiction ; singling out the novels of Lawrence and Joyce , Powys asks whether they contain any individuals or any manifestation of " the mysterious uniqueness of all separate living persons . " Proust alone is ...
... characters of modern fiction ; singling out the novels of Lawrence and Joyce , Powys asks whether they contain any individuals or any manifestation of " the mysterious uniqueness of all separate living persons . " Proust alone is ...
Page 38
... characters to cover a given distance of the city . . . .30 At a slightly lower level of dedication or obsession , and closer to Powys's practice , we find Joyce , when working on A Portrait , writing to his father for confirmation that ...
... characters to cover a given distance of the city . . . .30 At a slightly lower level of dedication or obsession , and closer to Powys's practice , we find Joyce , when working on A Portrait , writing to his father for confirmation that ...
Page 39
... characters into those of Celtic or Arthurian myth . In Glastonbury Powys establishes a congruity between myth and setting , but by leaving his myth unspecified he achieves instability and a witty , ironic freedom.34 Insofar as neither ...
... characters into those of Celtic or Arthurian myth . In Glastonbury Powys establishes a congruity between myth and setting , but by leaving his myth unspecified he achieves instability and a witty , ironic freedom.34 Insofar as neither ...
Contents
23 | |
43 | |
The Elemental Image in Wolf Solent | 55 |
The mysterious word Esplumeoir and Polyphonic Structure in A Glastonbury Romance | 71 |
Rituals of Return | 86 |
Margins and Thresholds in Weymouth Sands | 112 |
John Cowper Powys and Nonbeing | 136 |
Maiden Castle and The Plumed Serpent | 157 |
Animating Fictions in Maiden Castle | 180 |
The Lie of the Land or Plot and Autochthony in John Cowper Powys | 193 |
Porius and the Cauldron of Rebirth | 214 |
Powysian Answers | 236 |
Contributors | 258 |
Index | 258 |
Common terms and phrases
aboriginal Autobiography autochthonous Belinda Humfrey Blodeuwedd Brochvael cauldron Cavaliero Celtic chapter characters Christie consciousness Cordelia creative Creiddylad critical culture D. H. Lawrence dark dead death Dorset Dud's Eliot English erotic Esplumeoir essay Evans Evans's experience father feeling Finnegans Wake forces Geard genius loci Gerda Glastonbury Romance Grail human imagination James Joyce John Cowper Powys John Crow Joyce's landscape Lawrence's literature living Llewelyn Llewelyn Powys London magic Magnus Maiden Castle marginal mind Miss Drew modern Myrddin Myrddin Wyllt mysterious mystical myth narrative nature Nonbeing novelist occult passage past philosophy Plumed Serpent Porius Porius's Powys Review Powys's Powys's fiction Powys's novels Powysian present psychic quest Quetzalcoatl Ramón reader reading reality rebirth reprint Ridge scene seems sense soul spirit story suggest things thought tion turn Ulysses University Uryen vision Welsh Weymouth Sands Wilson Knight Wizzie Wolf Solent Wolf's word writing
Popular passages
Page 181 - ... books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
Page 250 - Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
Page 39 - It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.
Page 254 - We travel not for trafficking alone : By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We make the golden journey to Samarkand.
Page 247 - And ask of thee forgiveness : so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins ; who's in, who's out...
Page 74 - What unfolds in his works is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event.