Schenck David - The Orphic Voice - Paperback

Binding: Paperback
Description: A wondrously written book of literary criticism and philosophy that maps the relationship between poetry and natural history connecting verse from poets such as Shakespeare and Rainer Maria Rilke to the work of scientists and theorists like Francis Bacon and Michael Polanyi. Taking its bearings from the Greek myth of Orpheus whose singing had the power to move the rocks and trees and to quiet the animals Elizabeth Sewell's The Orphic Voice transforms our understanding of the relationship between mind and nature. Myth Sewell argues is not mere fable but an ancient and vital form of reflection that unites poetry philosophy and natural science: Shakespeare with Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico; Wordsworth and Rilke with Michael Polanyi. All these members of the Orphic company share a common perception that discovery in science and poetry is a mythological situation in which the mind unites with a figure of its own devising as a means toward understanding the world. Sewell's visionary book first published in 1960, presents brilliantly illuminating readings of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus among other masterpieces while deepening our understanding not only of poetry and the history of ideas but of the biological reach of the mind.
Title: The Orphic Voice
Author(s): Schenck David
Publisher: The New York Review Of Books Inc
Barcode: 9781681376011
Pages: 496 Pages
Publication Date: 5/3/2022
Category: Literature: History & Criticism