Platonism and the English Imagination

The first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on English literature.

Anna Baldwin (Edited by), Sarah Hutton (Edited by)

9780521403085, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 1994

376 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 3.3 cm, 0.725 kg

'… a fascinating introduction to the variety and richness of the tradition Plato inspired.' The Times Literary Supplement

This is the first compendious study of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work. Source texts include Plato's Dialogues, and the writings of Neoplatonists and the early Christians who were largely responsible for assimilating Platonic ideas into a Christian culture; and there are essays on more than thirty English authors from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, including Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch. Each chronological section has its own introduction to highlight how every age has reconstructed Platonism to suit its own understanding of the world, and there is a bibliographical guide to further reading. Established experts and new writers over a range of disciplines have worked together to produce the first comprehensive overview of Platonism in English literature.

Preface
Part I. Antiquity: 1. Plato and the neoplatonists Anne Shepard
Part II. The Early Christian Period and the Middle Ages: 2. Introduction Anna Baldwin
3. The Christian Platonism of St. Augustine Janet Coleman
4. Boethius and King Alfred Janet Bately
5. Chaucer's use of neoplatonic traditions Yasunari Takada
6. Platonism in the middle english mystics Andrew Louth
Part III. The Renaissance and the Seventeenth Century: 7. Introduction Sarah Hutton
8. The transformation of Platonic love in the Italian Renaissance Jill Kraye
9. Uses of Plato by Erasmus and more Dominic Baker-Smith
10. Italian neoplatonism and the poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Chapman and Donne John Doe
11. Shakespeare on beauty, truth and transcendence Stephen Medcalfe
12. Platonism in Spenser's mutability cantos Thomas Bulger
13. Reason, recollection and the Cambridge Platonists Dominic Scott
14. Platonic ascents and descents in Milton Anna Baldwin
15. Platonism in some metaphysical poets Sarah Hutton
Part IV. The Eighteenth Century: 16. Introduction Pat Rogers
17. Blake and Platonism Edward Larrissy
Part V. The Nineteenth Century: 18. Introduction Richard Jenkyns
19. Recollection and recovery: Coleridge's Platonism Keith Cunliffe
20. Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality Anthony Price
21. Shelley, Plato and the political imagination Jennifer Wallace
22. Matthew Arnold and the spirit of Plato Mark Rowe
23. Flow, rest and number: Pater's Plato Anne Varty
Part V. The Twentieth Century: 24. Introduction Angela Elliott
25. Yeats and Platonism Brian Arkins
26. Virginia Woolf and Plato Brenda Lyons
27. Plato and Eliot's earlier verse Dennis Brown
28. The Cantos of Ezra Pound: 'to build light' David A. Moody
29. Platonism in Auden Daphne Turner
30. Platonism in Iris Murdoch Peter Conradi.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]