The Classic Vision

The Retreat from Extremity in Modern Literature
Erscheinungsjahr 1973
ISBN: 978-0-8018-1551-5
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 390 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 641 g

In an earlier book Professor Krieger discussed the tragic vision as the confrontation with extremity—the writer's commitment to a master metaphor even as he acknowledges the incompleteness of that metaphor. The term "classic" is used here to indicate "the sense of restraint, of acceptance, of coming to terms with limitations self-imposed—as well as the awareness of the alternative one rejects in turning away from self-indulgence." The writer is thus viewed as one who accepts the common use of language while he endeavors to defy it through metaphor, one who accepts classically the common lot of man whereas his tragic impulse would lead him to reject it.

Professor Krieger begins with the Renaissance lyric, which for him represents both the last moment of union and the first moment of collision between the classic and tragic visions in literature. He then moves through poems, novels, and a play, ranging in time from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and delineates four kinds of retreat from extremity.

In the works of Pope and Samuel Johnson he finds retreat through the worship of bloodless abstractions. The second form of retreat is the embrace of the natural human community, and the focus is on Wordsworth, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Anthony Trollope. Through analyses of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, and works by Swift, Professor Krieger demonstrates retreat through acceptance of the "human barnyard." The final form of retreat, through an alternative to sainthood, is shown in Faulkner's Light in August and T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

In each case, Professor Krieger finds, by analyzing the pervading metaphor one is confronted with a counter-metaphor that mysteriously asserts itself: "The metaphors may have been unmetaphored, but they remain forms of imagination that constitute a reality, though it is now seen as imperfect. As such forms, the metaphors sustain us still. And that is perhaps the most classic notion of all."

Autoren/Hrsg.

Krieger, Murray

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Theoretical: The Tragic Vision and the Classic Vision
Chapter 2. Historical: The "Drab" Vision of Earthly Love
Part I. The Retreat from Extremity Through the Worship of Bloodless Abstractions
Chapter 3. "Eloisa to Abelard": The Escapt from Body of the Embrace of Body
Chapter 4. The Cosmetic Cosmos of "The Rape of the Lock"
Chapter 5. Samuel johnson: The "Extensive View" of mankind and the Cost of Acceptance
Part II. The Retreat from Extremity Through the Embrace of the Natural Human Community
Chapter 6. William Wordsworth and the Felix Culpa
Chapter 7. Adam Bede and the Cushioned Fakk: The Extenuation of Extremity
Chapter 8. Postscript: The Naive Classic and the Merely Comic
Part III. The Retreat from Extremity Through the Acceptance of the Human Barnyard
Chapter 9. The Human Inadequacy of Gulliver, Strephon, and Walter Shandy—and the Barnyard Alternative
Chapter 10. The Assumption of the "Burden" of History in All the King's Men
Part IV. The Retreat from Extremity Through an Alternative to Sainthood
Chapter 11. The Light-ening of the "Burdeb: of History: Light in August
Chapter 12. Murder in the Cathedral: The Limits of Drama and the Freedom of Vision
Epilogue
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Krieger, Murray
Murray Krieger, until recently the first holder of the M. F. Carpenter Chair in Literary Criticism at the University of Iowa, is now a professor of English at the University of California at Irvine. His many books include Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign and Words about Words about Words: Theory, Criticism, and the Literary Text.

Murray Krieger is University Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. His many books include Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign and Words about Words about Words: Theory, Criticism, and the Literary Text.