Reason and Beauty in the Poetic Mind

Download or read book Reason and Beauty in the Poetic Mind written by Charles Williams and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reason and Beauty in the Poetic Mind focuses upon the two intertwined themes of Reason and Beauty as they are expressed poetically in English literature. It begins with a chapter on the unique characteristics of poetic creation, "The Ostentation of Verse," and then unfolds in an alternating pattern, analyzing the distinctive appearances of these two concepts in writers as various as William Wordsworth (Reason), Christopher Marlowe (Beauty), Alexander Pope (Reason), John Keats (Beauty), and John Milton (Reason). In the climactic penultimate chapter, there is a meditation on William Shakespeare's depiction of what the author calls "the actual schism in Reason." There follows a brief coda that moves beyond the confines of poetry to a contemplation of the wider religious dimensions that the literary investigation has opened up.