Orpheus in Brooklyn: Orphism, Rimbaud, and Henry Miller (Studies in American Literature, 31)

Orpheus in Brooklyn is the first critical evaluation ever undertaken of the influence of Orphic thinking, and of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud's Orphic-derived strategies on the life attitudes and literary style of Henry Miller, especially on Miller's masterpiece, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941). It provides an in-depth analysis of all the major elements of the Greek myth of Orpheus and of the multipie uses to which Rimbaud, Orpheus' greatest modern disciple, put them in his own blazing masterpieces, A Season in Hell (1873) and Illuminations (1886), and it goes on to explain, point by Point, how a mere "Brooklyn boy" like Henry Miller succeeded in adapting these strategies to his own life and writings.