
James Merrill, Postmodern Magus
Myth and Poetics
Evans Lansing Smith(Author)
University of Iowa Press
Will be published approx. on 1. August 2008
Book
Hardback
276 pages
978-1-58729-696-3 (ISBN)
Description
One of the unique voices in our century, James Merrill was known for his mastery of prosody; his ability to write books that were not just collected poems but unified works in which each individual poem contributed to the whole; and his astonishing evolution from the formalist lyric tradition that influenced his early work to the spiritual epics of his later career. Merrill's accomplishments were recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for Divine Comedies and a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983 for The Changing Light at Sandover.
In this meticulously researched, carefully argued work, Evans Lansing Smith argues that the nekyia, the circular Homeric narrative describing the descent into the underworld and reemergence in the same or similar place, confers shape and significance upon the entirety of James Merrill's poetry. Smith illustrates how pervasive this myth is in Merrill's work - not just in The Changing Light at Sandover, where it naturally serves as the central premise of the entire trilogy, but in all of the poet's books, before and after that central text.
By focusing on the details of versification and prosody, Smith demonstrates the ingenious fusion of form and content that distinguishes Merrill as a poet. Moving beyond purely literary interpretations of the poetry, Smith illuminates the numerous allusions to music, art, theology, philosophy, religion, and mythology found throughout Merrill's work.
In this meticulously researched, carefully argued work, Evans Lansing Smith argues that the nekyia, the circular Homeric narrative describing the descent into the underworld and reemergence in the same or similar place, confers shape and significance upon the entirety of James Merrill's poetry. Smith illustrates how pervasive this myth is in Merrill's work - not just in The Changing Light at Sandover, where it naturally serves as the central premise of the entire trilogy, but in all of the poet's books, before and after that central text.
By focusing on the details of versification and prosody, Smith demonstrates the ingenious fusion of form and content that distinguishes Merrill as a poet. Moving beyond purely literary interpretations of the poetry, Smith illuminates the numerous allusions to music, art, theology, philosophy, religion, and mythology found throughout Merrill's work.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Iowa
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 167 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-58729-696-3 (9781587296963)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Evans Lansing Smith is a professor of English at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. He is the author of seven books, including The Myth of the Descent to the Underworld in Postmodern Literature, Figuring Poesis: A Mythical Geometry of Postmodernism, Ricorso and Revelation: An Archetypal Poetics of Modernism, and Rape and Revelation: The Descent into the Underworld in Modernism.