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
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... novelist and Nobel nominee who has been described as one of the great European novelists of the twentieth century . The collection begins with a brief in- troduction assessing Powys's work in the context of the literary and critical sen ...
... novelist and Nobel nominee who has been described as one of the great European novelists of the twentieth century . The collection begins with a brief in- troduction assessing Powys's work in the context of the literary and critical sen ...
Page 7
... novelists of this century has seemed evident since 1929 , when the first of his " English " novels , Wolf Solent , was published . That he has had , over the same period , a number of ardent detractors is also the case . This ...
... novelists of this century has seemed evident since 1929 , when the first of his " English " novels , Wolf Solent , was published . That he has had , over the same period , a number of ardent detractors is also the case . This ...
Page 13
... novelist most commonly acknowledged as the exemplar of the modern . The correspondences in their life and work are intriguing and instructive . Both were writers - in - exile , a fact acknowledged more for Joyce than for Powys , even ...
... novelist most commonly acknowledged as the exemplar of the modern . The correspondences in their life and work are intriguing and instructive . Both were writers - in - exile , a fact acknowledged more for Joyce than for Powys , even ...
Page 16
... novelists were Scott , Dickens , Conrad , and Dostoievsky — together with Hardy , whom he knew personally — but did Powys write simply to re - create the pleasures of reading this formidable gallery ? Certainly there are times when his ...
... novelists were Scott , Dickens , Conrad , and Dostoievsky — together with Hardy , whom he knew personally — but did Powys write simply to re - create the pleasures of reading this formidable gallery ? Certainly there are times when his ...
Page 18
... , who is undoubtedly the equal of Lawrence as a novelist of psychological insight , there is a more strongly stated assertion of a relationship between the individual and the cosmos , between man in the generic 18 DENIS LANE.
... , who is undoubtedly the equal of Lawrence as a novelist of psychological insight , there is a more strongly stated assertion of a relationship between the individual and the cosmos , between man in the generic 18 DENIS LANE.
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.