In the Spirit of Powys: New EssaysDenis Lane 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 17
... story , to bear any resemblance to the truth , should advance and retreat erratically . " ( 237 ) Equally , Powys's link to Scott , Hardy , and the others that I have mentioned seems ultimately to be a question not of imitation but of ...
... story , to bear any resemblance to the truth , should advance and retreat erratically . " ( 237 ) Equally , Powys's link to Scott , Hardy , and the others that I have mentioned seems ultimately to be a question not of imitation but of ...
Page 30
... story of Iseult . ( 5 ) That " so have we all " is revealing : we may suspect , throughout these comments , that Powys is implying a comparison between Joyce and himself . He is very willing to praise Joyce , but he is equally unwilling ...
... story of Iseult . ( 5 ) That " so have we all " is revealing : we may suspect , throughout these comments , that Powys is implying a comparison between Joyce and himself . He is very willing to praise Joyce , but he is equally unwilling ...
Page 36
... story . Powys's failure to acknowledge the first of these , even in a book entitled Obstinate Cymric , is curious . Each writer was conscious of himself as an uprooted Celt and , presumably as a consequence , both were intensely aware ...
... story . Powys's failure to acknowledge the first of these , even in a book entitled Obstinate Cymric , is curious . Each writer was conscious of himself as an uprooted Celt and , presumably as a consequence , both were intensely aware ...
Page 39
... story . Similarly , A Glastonbury Romance invites mythological parallels , challenging the reader to translate its characters into those of Celtic or Arthurian myth . In Glastonbury Powys establishes a congruity between myth and setting ...
... story . Similarly , A Glastonbury Romance invites mythological parallels , challenging the reader to translate its characters into those of Celtic or Arthurian myth . In Glastonbury Powys establishes a congruity between myth and setting ...
Page 43
... story , and if a historian is going to understand the dynamics of past events and the personalities involved , whether con- ceived on a narrow or wide scale , he must re - experience the situations and imaginative axes upon which the story ...
... story , and if a historian is going to understand the dynamics of past events and the personalities involved , whether con- ceived on a narrow or wide scale , he must re - experience the situations and imaginative axes upon which the story ...
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.