- Hardcover: 160 pages
- Publisher: Seren (11 May 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1854111426
- ISBN-13: 978-1854111425
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,092,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
Product Description
Product Description
There is no portrait of Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan (1621-95), and little documentation of his life. However, at the tercentenary of his death his writing remains as influential as ever and the writer continues to fascinate. Stevie Davies uses her skills as a novelist and critic to bring to life her now distant subject: 'I wanted to imagine him as a real and breathing person in a landscape both geographical and historical,' she writes in her preface to this book. Through Vaughan's writing and other sources she has produced a persuasive picture of a man beset by anxieties and challenges. The death of his twin brother Thomas, and the English Civil War were two crucial turning points. His outgoing writer brother predeceased Henry by some thirty years, leaving him to search for a single identity, while the defeat of the Royalist party and the execution of Charles I left members of his class and political affiliation social and religious outcasts. Even the Restoration could not rescue the naturally introvert Vaughan. He had become a man who turned failure into glory and who was most himself alone, silent and outdoors. His writing was driven by nostalgia for his childhood and attempted to recapture the individual, society and mankind had lost, a loss manifested in man's pollution of the environment. Stevie Davies's use of contemporary research on twinship, her knowledge of the seventeenth century (she has written extensively on Milton) and her novelist's intuition, have resulted in an invaluable and accessible life of a writer whose poetry is still relevant today.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most concise and illuminating study,
By A Customer
This review is from: Henry Vaughan (Border Lines) (Paperback)
This is the most attractively written and illuminating study of Vaughan's poetry that I have read. It artfully weaves what we know of Vaughan's life into the fabric of the poems without devaluing them by any trace of reductionism. It both accounts for the intensity of his vision and its falling away in a credible and utterly helpful way. It also tries to answer how such a visionary poet can also be a man who towards the end of his life seemed in danger of being consumed by familial feuding!The readings of individual poems show a great love for the material, a knowledge of its sources and do what all criticism should send you back with renewed and deepened enthusiasm for the poems themselves.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > Britain
- Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Poets
- Books > Biography > Religious > Christianity
- Books > History > Britain & Ireland > British Heads of State > Henry V
- Books > History > Religious History > Christianity
- Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism
- Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Poetry
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
