| Description |
212 pages ; 20 cm |
| Contents |
I. The Pagan School -- II. Mental Waters -- III. Incipit parodia -- IV. Musings of a Serial Killer -- V. An Abandoned Room -- VI. Mallarme in Oxford -- VII. "Meters Are the Cattle of the Gods" -- VIII. Absolute Literature |
| Summary |
"Literature and the Gods traces the return of pagan divinities to Western literature from their first reappearance at the beginning of the modern era to their place in the literature of our own time." "Calasso sets out to uncover the divine - godly or otherwise - in specific texts, and finds in it what he calls "absolute literature." With its roots in early Vedic verse, absolute literature reached the apex of its expression during the period beginning with the German Romantics in 1798 and ending with Mallarme's death in 1898. But Calasso also discovers the divine in the work of Valery, Auden, Yeats, Montale, Borges, and Nabokov, and he reveals how these writers, in their own very particular ways, were articulating the same unnameable thing. Finally, he delineates the timeless, ever-mysterious laws that surround the creative act itself."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
"Borzoi book"--T.p. verso |
|
Based on the Weidenfeld lectures, Oxford, May 2000--Jkt |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-208) and index |
| Notes |
Originally published Milan, Italy : Adelphi Edizioni, c2001. Under title letteratura e gli dèi |
|
Translation of: La letteratura e gli dèi |
| Subject |
Mythology, Classical, in literature.
|
|
Gods in literature.
|
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Mythology, Greek, in literature.
|
| Author |
Parks, Tim.
|
| LC no. |
2001275881 |
| ISBN |
0375411380 |
|
