Arthurian Triptych: Mythic Materials in Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and T. S. Eliot

<p>The use of myth in literature serves as a powerful tool for modern poets and critics to bring order and meaning to the chaos of contemporary life. Emerging in response to the fragmented and disillusioned ethos of the twentieth century, myth offers a structured and symbolic framework that poets like Yeats, Eliot, and Auden have employed to reconcile their disordered world with timeless archetypes. Unlike illustrative metaphors that clarify by comparison, the sacramental use of myth integrates symbol and object, imbuing the poem with layered complexity and drawing on the rich connotations of shared cultural narratives. This approach requires an act of faith from both poet and reader: the poet must embed myth as a dynamic referent, and the reader must engage with its inherent symbolic depth, enriching the experience of the poem. By invoking myth as a "stockpile of common imagery," poets connect their personal visions to a broader, universal order, transforming chaotic individual experiences into coherent artistic expressions. As T.S. Eliot famously remarked regarding Ulysses, myth provides a method of "controlling, ordering, and giving significance" to the otherwise futile and anarchic panorama of modern history, reaffirming its value as a vital artistic and critical strategy.\nThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.</p>

Literature & Fiction

Moorman, Charles

History & Criticism

University of California Press

Kings & captains;: Variations on a heroic theme

University Press of Kentucky

Charles Moorman reexamines several major works of the western heroic tradition: The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Nibelungenlied, the Norse sagas, and the Arthurian cycle. Disregarding the usual limited definitions which have controlled the study of heroic literature, he draws together these disparate works by proposing a theme common to them all: the opposition of two major figures whom he names king and captain.The figure of the king arises from the community with its need for responsible government, while the captain, derived from myth, is a highly individualistic, irresponsible heroic figure. The tension which Moorman sees between them is used as a means of reinterpreting the works under study. Though widely separated in time and cultural milieu, The Illiad, and The Song of Roland, for example, can be compared by interpreting both the Agamemnon-Achilles and the Oliver-Roland relationships as conflicts between king and captain. These essays will prove illuminating for layman and scholar alike.

Kings and Captains: Variations on a Heroic Theme

The Pearl-Poet

Poetry

Irvington Pub.

Arthurian Triptych: Mythic Materials in Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and T. S. Eliot (University of California Perspectives in Criticism, 5)

Russell Russell

Editing the Middle English manuscript

University Press of Mississipp

An Arthurian Dictionary

An Arthurian dictionary

Reference

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

This handy, compact, and authoritative volume provides readers and students with information about a multitude of Arthurian characters, places, themes, and topics from the first written records of early myths and legends through Sir Thomas Malory's epic Morte D'arthur.

Moorman, Ruth

This edition of the complete Works of Cotton Nero A.x.---Patience, Purity, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight---is the first collected edition since the manuscript itself.  Charles Moorman's hope is that this work will facilitate studies of the whole Gawain-Poet, in addition to those of his individual works.  In addition, this edition should provide a basis for comparative study and aid in an evaluation of the poet's development. Designed for the professional scholar, the student, and the general reader with no training in Middle English, this edition brings together the tools for both introductory and advances study.  Moorman has tried to make the text as readable, the notes as succinct and informative, and the glossary as useful as possible.  The new reader will find before him everything necessary for a convenient first reading, and the scholar will see and appreciate the results of generations of scholarship. These four poems---two dramatic biblical narratives, an elegy, and a chivalric romance---are, next to the works of Chaucer, the finest poems of the fourteenth century, an age abounding in great literature.  Their variety, their rich imagery, their depth of mood and feeling, and particularly their sensitive responsiveness to the moral dilemmas of human life make these poems an endless, if not wholly translatable, source of both despair and comfort.  The Works of the Gawain-Poet presents a number of distictive features: a conservatively edited text; the original manuscript illustrations; apparatus, glosses, and notes on the page with the text; and a full introduction and bibliography.  The book should prove useful both as a reading and reference edition and as a graduate text.

The Works of the Gawain-Poet

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