Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb's Art of AutobiographyDuke University Press, 1984 - 165 страници More than Charles Lamb himself could ever know, the creation of Elia as his personal artistic voice was his way to endure the memories of September 22, 1796, a day of primal horror when his sister Mary in a fit of insanity killed their mother and destroyed the Lamb family. Throughout the rest of his life Lamb was faced with those memories , with deep-seated personal and career disillusionments. Yet through Elia he confronted his inner self to forge the essays that may be considered among the most brilliant and inimitable works in English letters. Gerald Monsman in this study abandons the customary chronological approach to Lamb's life in favor of a more incisive, open-ended discussion of the Elia essays. By a close textual examination of Lamb's language, he relates the essayist's use of symbol and autobiographical concerns. Monsman contends and demonstrates that "as sharply and as pertinently as any artistic voice, Elia, the most celebrated persona in the nineteenth century, focuses the problems inherent in the modern literary imagination." Elia's "textual identity is a function of the author's actual life, of losses and imperfections artistically utilized and harmonized, employed against themselves to produce the rehabilitating symbol." |
Съдържание
Of Men and Angels | 20 |
Of Ledgers and Lexicons | 37 |
Of Benchers and Magi | 55 |
Of Pigs and Friends | 74 |
Of Cards and China | 90 |
Of Books and Plays | 109 |
Of Children and Houses | 128 |
The old man as romantic symbol | 145 |
Notes | 155 |
Index | 161 |
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Често срещани думи и фрази
Abt Vogler adult aesthetic Alice artist ballein Barry Cornwall Battle's beauty becomes beggar Bigod Blakesmoor Bo-bo borrowers bubble cards celestial bios character of Lamb Charles Lamb Child Angel Christ's Hospital clerk Coleridge Coleridge's Comberbatch Confessions corpse countinghouse dead death double Dream-Children dreams Dyer Dyer's E. V. Lucas echo Edax Elia and Bridget Elia's Essays of Elia fictional character figure garden George Dyer guilt hoax horror ideal identity imagination imperfections innocence ironic John Keats Kubla Khan Lapis Lazuli ledgers Letters limp literal loss lost mantle Mary metaphoric never Old Benchers Old China original Oxford past Pensilis perfect illusion persona of Lamb play plenitude Plumers present profane prose quill reality realm Roast Pig Samuel says seems sense South-Sea House superfoetation symbol teacup temporal terrene Thomas timeless tion truth turn ultimate vision visionary whist Witch of Endor Witches words Wordsworth Wordsworthian Yeats