Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling book, great literature, great wisdom, 2 Feb 2006
The thesis of Sagar's "Literature and the Crime Against Nature" is that literature through the language of the imagination has a crucial contribution to make in freeing us from self-limiting "bonds and divisions," and connecting "all the severed halves - inner and outer, self and other, male and female, life and death, man and Nature," allowing us to reaffirm our relationship with nature, showing us that in a deep and primal way our emotional well-being depends on our willingness to rediscover and embrace the earth-bound, natural part of ourselves. Sagar takes on a penetrating exploration of the writings of Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Euripides, Coleridge, Conrad, Golding, Lawrence and Hughes, as well as others, bringing to the surface the unifying theme running through their works, namely, the need to nurture our ties with the natural world, and the perils that ensue when we split ourselves off from our sensual selves. Anyone who loves literature and seeks a deeper appreciation of the truths in these great literary works, or who has a curiosity about their own instinctual nature and their relationship with the natural world will be enriched by this book.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Literature and the Crisis of our Time: a new Perspective, 13 April 2006
This is a collection of nineteen essays on great, canonical literature, four of them on ancient Greek drama and fifteen on literature in English from the 14th to the 20th centuries. Dr Sagar contends that all the authors he considers were in different ways deeply concerned with the same question, a question which in our days has become urgent and critical: what are the proper relations of Man with Nature, that is with both his own inner nature and with circumambient nature?
We are clearly being offered the fruit of a lifetime's reading, reflection and argument and it is important to note that even if the grand unifying theory is not accepted in toto, the offer is still well worth taking, for the separate chapters are all sharply perceptive and closely argued. For students of English Literature, and indeed for their teachers, Dr Sagar's book should provide an invaluable stimulus and an admirable example of close literary argument. When several of these chapters were available in the internet, they were downloaded at the rate of over 200 per week.
Of Oedipus Rex Sagar contends that Oedipus, in trusting to mother-wit not bird-lore, in toppling the Sphinx and slaying Laius, stands for Man as he has developed in the West from the bronze age: trusting in his own intelligence to fix the situation, spurning the irrational, going confidently down his chosen road, ready to solve problems by violent action and quick to snatch apparent rewards. The Sphinx herself stands for the irrational, the feminine and ultimately for Nature herself. Oedipus has slain her and her rotting corpse has spread the plague through Thebes; and in this Sagar sees an accurate anticipation of the way in which we of the 21st century, following Oedipus and looking for quick fixes, have scattered dioxins over the land while our poisons seep into waters under the earth, bringing death and sterility.
This method based on close reading and contemporary interpretation is extended through fifteen chapters. Shakespeare is dealt with extensively. The explications of the lyrics of G.M.Hopkins are among the most illuminating available.
Dr Sagar is a leading scholar of D.H.Lawrence. He is one of the Cambridge editors and has brought out two biographical works, two major critical works, a calendar of Lawrence's writings and a catalogue of his paintings and the fruits of this life-long and loving study are compressed into one fascinating chapter. He is at his illuminating best in talking of Lawrence's thematic imagery: showing how the opening paragraph of Odour of Chrysanthemums contains the prototype of all Lawrence's industrial waster lands, or how the opening chapter of The Rainbow offers a duality between horizontals, associated with the land itself and with the life of the senses, and verticals and which symbolise all that aspires, whether socially nor culturally or spiritually to rise above the flatness.
Sagar is also the leading scholar of Ted Hughes, and poet and critic were friends and corresponded for thirty years. One of the most illuminating passages in the chapter on Hughes is its title: "From world of Blood to World of Light", a direction from which we may also offer us all a little hope, for where the poets have gone, it may be possible for the rest of us to follow.
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by John Gray
by Ted Hughes
by Sara Maitland
by Roger Deakin
by Edward Thomas
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