Through the poetry of Wallace Stevens has been studied from a variety of critical perspectives, most critics share the view that Stevens is a secular poet who refuses religious definitions of man and nature. His major subject, it is thought, is poetry, which in its broadest sense stands as synecdoche for the possibilities that inhere in the mind engaged in creating itself even as it creates its art. This study confirms that Stevens's major concern is indeed poetry, but it proposes that when Steven speaks of the peerless poem qualified by such epithets as "grand" or "central" or "ultimate" or "supreme," he is not referring to the objective artifact with which we commonly associate the term but is rather outlining the contours of the Hermetic transcendental Man encountered in the course of spiritual meditation. Accordingly, art, in Steven's view, is a secondary or "lesser" form eventually superseded by the soul metamorphosed into an image of deity - what Stevens called "pure poetry" or the "ultimate poem." Woodman traces the appearance of the Heavenly Man of spiritual alchemy in "Owl's Clover," Steven's longest poem, and in the figure of the hero, a major motif in Stevens's work from the thirties on. She then considers the alchemical tradition to clarify the uses Steven made of its symbolic system. Succeeding chapters consider the relation of the Hermetic Man to the "supreme fiction"; the spiritual reciprocity between imagination and reality - variations of the Hermetic doctrine of correspondence; the decreation and recreation of self and nature that constitute the metamorphic stages of Hermetic meditation; and the Hermetic theory of transcendental perception that lies at the core of Steven's account of human transformation. The final chapter turns to Steven's native Pennsylvania to suggest the means by which he may have encountered the Rosicrucian tradition (the corporate form of modern Hermetism) that appears to have profoundly influenced his creative life.
Through the poetry of Wallace Stevens has been studied from a variety of critical perspectives, most critics share the view that Stevens is a secular poet who refuses religious definitions of man and nature. His major subject, it is thought, is poetry, which in its broadest sense stands as synecdoche for the possibilities that inhere in the mind engaged in creating itself even as it creates its art. This study confirms that Stevens's major concern is indeed poetry, but it proposes that when Steven speaks of the peerless poem qualified by such epithets as "grand" or "central" or "ultimate" or "supreme," he is not referring to the objective artifact with which we commonly associate the term but is rather outlining the contours of the Hermetic transcendental Man encountered in the course of spiritual meditation. Accordingly, art, in Steven's view, is a secondary or "lesser" form eventually superseded by the soul metamorphosed into an image of deity - what Stevens called "pure poetry" or the "ultimate poem." Woodman traces the appearance of the Heavenly Man of spiritual alchemy in "Owl's Clover," Steven's longest poem, and in the figure of the hero, a major motif in Stevens's work from the thirties on. She then considers the alchemical tradition to clarify the uses Steven made of its symbolic system. Succeeding chapters consider the relation of the Hermetic Man to the "supreme fiction"; the spiritual reciprocity between imagination and reality - variations of the Hermetic doctrine of correspondence; the decreation and recreation of self and nature that constitute the metamorphic stages of Hermetic meditation; and the Hermetic theory of transcendental perception that lies at the core of Steven's account of human transformation. The final chapter turns to Steven's native Pennsylvania to suggest the means by which he may have encountered the Rosicrucian tradition (the corporate form of modern Hermetism) that appears to have profoundly influenced his creative life.
First published in 1986. This book is concerned with the problems children have in learning in normal or remedial classrooms, within ordinary primary schools. It deals with children in the 5 to 11 age range but much is also applicable to children at the lower end of the secondary school. It looks at a wide range of difficulties and for each area it classifies and describes the difficulties, considers the numbers of children with the difficulty; and discusses problems of diagnosis and remediation. It reviews certain psychological theories and research findings and relates them to practice; and it describes the work of professionals such as speech therapists, showing how the classroom teacher can support such professionals; but the major concern of the book is to help practicing teachers and teachers in training to work out intelligently for themselves how to improve their performance in this area.
Byzantine princess Anna Komnene is known for writing history and plotting to become empress by murdering her brother. This book explains how Anna broke her culture's rules for women's behavior by writing history, her efforts to be acceptable, and how her writing nonetheless fired the story of her bloodthirsty ambition.
Nikephoros Bryennios' history of the Byzantine Empire in the 1070s is a story of civil war and aristocratic rebellion in the midst of the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. Commonly remembered as the passive and unambitious husband of Princess Anna Komnene (author of the Alexiad), Bryennios is revealed as a skilled author whose history draws on cultural memories of classical Roman honor and proper masculinity to evaluate the politicians of the 1070s and implicitly to exhort his twelfth-century contemporaries to honorable behavior. Bryennios' story valorizes the memory of his grandfather and other honorable, but failed, generals of the eleventh century while subtly portraying the victorious Alexios Komnenos as un-Roman. This reading of the Material for History sheds new light on twelfth-century Byzantine culture and politics, especially the contested accession of John Komnenos, the relationship between Bryennios' history and the Alexiad and the function of cultural memories of Roman honor in Byzantium.
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