Merciless Beauty

This significant collection of essays examines the cultural, literary, philosophical and historical representation of beauty in British, Irish and American literature. Contributors use the works of Charles Dickens, T S Eliot, W H Auden and Stephen Spender among others to explore the role of beauty and its wider implications in art and society.

Donald Meltzer coined the term 'aesthetic conflict' to describe the emotional complexities of the 'apprehension of beauty'. It had its roots in art, literature, infant observation, and above all, in clinical experience. This concept affirmed and illustrated Bion's formula of L, H, K (Love, Hate, and Knowledge), together with its negative (minus L, H, K) as a revision of Klein's fundamental emotional dynamics of Envy and Gratitude. As such, any emotional situation may be read in terms of either struggling with or retreating from the aesthetic conflict that occurs naturally at all key points of psychic development. Meltzer could be said to have encapsulated the essence of Bion's post-Kleinian trajectory when he wrote that 'If we follow Bion's thought closely, we see that the new idea presents itself as an emotional experience of the beauty of the world and its wondrous organisation.' The contributions in this book are by analysts and therapists from a wide variety of countries working with both children and adults. They have all, in individual ways, found 'aesthetic conflict' a useful frame of reference in terms of illuminating the significance of clinical observation, understanding countertransference responses, or practising the psychoanalytic method itself.

A fundamental work in Chaucerian textual analysis.

Miracles are created. What about myths? In the game, one could look for miracles, but in the game, one needed to create a legend. Accidents are often the starting point for the achievement of myths. The accident that happened when he was a child caused him to obtain the Chaotic Body ... Yet, he was unable to cultivate due to an accident... There were too many accidents, and it was precisely these accidents that had made him so ... The game was merciless. It was brotherly!

"This single-volume life-and-works biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams provides a contemporary reassessment of one of the twentieth century's most versatile, influential, and enduringly popular British musicians. Throughout his wide-ranging career-as composer, conductor, editor, scholar, folksong collector, teacher, author, administrator, and philanthropist-Vaughan Williams worked tirelessly to improve the standards and quality of British musical life. His compelling and original musical language-inspired in part by elements drawn from English folksong, French impressionism, Wagnerian post-chromaticism, Tudor-era sacred music, and Anglican hymnody-presented a distinctively British response to musical modernism over his sixty-year-long career, and in works ranging from art songs for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of the twentieth century. Alternating between biographical and analytical chapters, it draws upon previously inaccessible primary sources alongside a wealth of secondary material to craft a concise and engaging overview of Vaughan Williams's life and music"--

A comprehensive reassessment of this towering figure of twentieth-century music, examining works, cultural context and reception in Britain and beyond.