Reason And Beauty In The Poetic Mind

"Reason and Beauty" is a work of literary criticism by British poet, novelist, theologian and literary critic, Charles Walter Williams. Williams was a prominent member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group associated with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien at the University of Oxford. He gives his motives for writing as follows, "The four corners of this book lie at the following points (i) the use of the word Reason by Wordsworth in the Prelude; (ii) the abandonment of the intellect by Keats in the Nightingale and the Urn; (iii) the emphasis laid on Reason by Milton in Paradise Lost; (iv) the schism in Reason studied by Shakespeare in the tragedies. Add to these the four middle points of (i) the definition of Beauty by Marlowe in Tamburlaine; (ii) the imagination of it by Keats in the same two odes; (iii) the identification of it with Reason in Paradise Lost; (iv) the humanization of it in the women of Troilus and Othello and the later plays; and the ground plan will be sufficiently marked. The studies are meant as literary, and not as either philosophical or aesthetic criticism. They do not attempt to consider what the poets ought to do, only what they have done, and that from the special point of view of their explicit use of those two words, or of their implicit attention to them. The book is therefore but an exploration of the content of certain places of poetry, in an order suggested by the relative richness of that content..."

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.

After an opening chapter that examines the nature of poetry itself and analyzes its effect upon the reader, the author, in The English Poetic Mind, moves on to his main purpose, which is to try to reveal the source of the drive to creation in three of the greatest English poets: William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth. In each he identifies a particular kind of crisis that is the origin of the poetic impulse. In the light of these discoveries he addresses the achievements of several lesser poets and concludes with a chapter that, in a more general way, tentatively offers a vision of the paths poetry might take in the future.

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This book seeks to study the mind of a poet, specifically by picking William Wordsworth as a case study. The reason for signaling out Wordsworth as the person in whom to study the mind of a poet is that The Prelude reveals with unusual fullness a mind that is fundamentally poetic. Even its peculiarities, its numerous limitations, and its unusual emphases are in the main those of a poet. Besides, poetry—not, as with many other writers, religious or social problems, humanitarianism, science, politics, economics, metaphysics, or literary criticism—was the chief concern of his creative years. Further, the sheer amount of verse, criticism, letters, and journals Wordsworth produced makes him an excellent choice for a study of this kind.

Charles Williams (1886-1945), the friend of T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien, was both a writer with many gifts and a religious thinker of an unusual kind. Poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, critic, and theologian, in each capacity he displayed a distinctive and highly imaginative cast of mind. Here, in the first full-length study to appear for over twenty years, Glen Cavaliero discusses Williams's work in its entirety and pays particular attention to the manner in which his theological ideas were shaped and furthered by his various literary achievements. Following a brief account of Williams's life, the author examines the early poems, the criticism, biographies and plays, the novels, the Arthurian poems, and the assessment of Charles Williams's literary and theological importance. The book also illuminates the relationship between religious belief and the scope and working of the poetic mind. The discussion of Williams's place in twentieth-century literary history as a writer of "fantasy literature, and of his unique gifts as a Christian apologist in an age of skepticism, ensures that this book will be of immense interest to literary critics and theologians alike.

Understanding the Person of Christ affects our understanding of all Christian theology. All ten contributors to this volume share a commitment to the orthodox theological tradition in Christology as expressed in the creedal heritage of the Christian church, and seek to explicate the continuing coherence and importance of that theological tradition. The book's ten essays cover such topics as prolegomena to Christology, the incarnation, the person and nature of Christ, the communicatio idiomatum, the baptism of Christ, the redemptive work of Christ, the ascended Christ, and New Testament Christology, and offers critical engagements with such diverse theologians as John Calvin, Charles Williams and John Zizioulas. The contributors, all leading academics, include: John Webster, Richard Burridge, Robert Jenson, Stephen Holmes, Douglas Farrow, Brian Horne, Murray, Douglas Knight, Sandra Fach, Christoph Schwoebel.