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. |
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Page 9
... death - bringers gathered , stealing , shoaling , rippling , tossing , waves and ground - swells together , cresting billows and unruffled curves of slippery water , rolling in with a volume that increased its momentum with every tide ...
... death - bringers gathered , stealing , shoaling , rippling , tossing , waves and ground - swells together , cresting billows and unruffled curves of slippery water , rolling in with a volume that increased its momentum with every tide ...
Page 14
... death and renewal — it embraces a philosophy of history that falls more compatibly within the speculations of Speng- ler or Massingham than any others . Often termed a " historical " novel , Porius is more appropriately to be recognized ...
... death and renewal — it embraces a philosophy of history that falls more compatibly within the speculations of Speng- ler or Massingham than any others . Often termed a " historical " novel , Porius is more appropriately to be recognized ...
Page 15
... death and the possibility of an afterlife . And finally , he traces this recurrent strand as it is displayed in John Cowper's Morwyn and the major poem , " The Ridge . " He does this with all the verve and acuity for which as a leading ...
... death and the possibility of an afterlife . And finally , he traces this recurrent strand as it is displayed in John Cowper's Morwyn and the major poem , " The Ridge . " He does this with all the verve and acuity for which as a leading ...
Page 23
... proper yardstick . In 1934 Powys returned to Britain , and his connections with Ameri- can cultural life were quickly severed ; until his death in 1963 Powys lived in North Wales , and it was assumed by 23 John Cowper Powys and James Joyce.
... proper yardstick . In 1934 Powys returned to Britain , and his connections with Ameri- can cultural life were quickly severed ; until his death in 1963 Powys lived in North Wales , and it was assumed by 23 John Cowper Powys and James Joyce.
Page 32
... death frequently , almost obsessively , as if it were of personal significance . With Proust's death , Joyce became Powys's only rival and peer . By 1923 , at the age of fifty , Powys had written nothing of the first importance , but ...
... death frequently , almost obsessively , as if it were of personal significance . With Proust's death , Joyce became Powys's only rival and peer . By 1923 , at the age of fifty , Powys had written nothing of the first importance , but ...
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.