What is the difference between a natural beginning and the beginning of a story? Some deny that there are any beginnings in nature, except perhaps for the origin of the universe itself, suggesting that elsewhere there is only a continuum of events, into which beginnings are variously "read" by different societies. This book argues that history is full of real beginnings but that poets and novelists are indeed free to begin their stories wherever they choose. The ancient poet Homer laid down a rule for his successors when he began his epic by plunging in media res, "into the midst of things."...
What is the difference between a natural beginning and the beginning of a story? Some deny that there are any beginnings in nature, except perhaps for...
What is the creator of the world were evil? What if Christ, the Son, were the antagonist rather than the ally of the Father? Nuttall tracks this subversive theology from the Gnostics of the second century, through its flickering reappearance in Marlowe and Milton, to its full development in Blake.
What is the creator of the world were evil? What if Christ, the Son, were the antagonist rather than the ally of the Father? Nuttall tracks this subve...
The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy family: the Father and the Son do not get on. It might be thought that so cumbersome a notion is inconceivable before the rise of Romanticism but the Ophite Gnostics of the second century AD appear to have thought that God the Father was a jealous tyrant because he forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that the serpent, who led the way to the Tree of Knowledge, was really Christ. This book explores the possibility of an underground "perennial heresy," linking the...
The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy family: the Father and the Son do not get on....
In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-classical conceptions of realism, and considers Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and both parts of King Henry IV as a prolonged feat of mimesis, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare's perception of society and culture as subject to historical change. Shakespeare is chosen as the great example of realism because he addresses not only the stable characteristics but also the...
In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-c...
The fundamental subject of A. D. Nuttall's bold and daring first book, " Two Concepts of Allegory," is a particular habit of thought--the practice of thinking about universals as though they were concrete things. His study takes the form of an inquiry into certain conceptual questions raised, in the first place, by the allegorical critics of "The Tempest," and, in the second place, by allegorical and quasi-allegorical poetry in general. The argument has the further consequence of suggesting that allegory and metaphysics are in practice more closely allied than is commonly supposed. This...
The fundamental subject of A. D. Nuttall's bold and daring first book, " Two Concepts of Allegory," is a particular habit of thought--the practice of ...
