scholarly journals “Thou shalt bid thy fair hands rove”: L. E. L.’s Wooing of Sex, Pain, Death and the Editor

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Lawford
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Relationship ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Letitia Landon ◽  
Desire For Death ◽  
Illegitimate Children

Abstract So what if Letitia Landon had three illegitimate children by William Jerdan? What difference does the discovery of the affair make for our reading of L. E. L.’s poetry? This essay begins to explore these questions with regard to her love poems, many of which culminate in a desire for death even greater than that voiced for the absent beloved. We have been disinclined to believe in the authenticity of the poems’ fatal passions and naturally require more evidence before we can assume that any of their intensity is related to Landon’s feelings for the bibulous Literary Gazette editor. Through examining a number of Landon’s early, sexually daring poems and her relationship with Jerdan at the time of their writing, this essay provides some of that evidence and discusses the part these works likely played in the evolution of this literary and sexual relationship. According to Landon’s theory, genius had to devote its grand soul to an inferior being to experience the torment essential for producing literary works of the highest order. Landon viewed her affair with the editor as a means to a greater end: the poems themselves, including, not incidentally, their publication and promotion.

Terminally Ill Patients and Desire for Death

1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Brown ◽  
P. Henteleff ◽  
S. Barakat ◽  
C. J. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Terminally Ill Patients ◽  
Desire For Death

The belief in love myths and their influence on sexual relationship progression in college age students

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Marsing ◽  
Casey Barron ◽  
Melissa Benavides ◽  
Claire Talley ◽  
Sydnee Walters
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Relationship ◽  
College Age ◽  
Relationship Progression

The Qur'an in the Novels of Naguib Mahfouz (in Arabic)

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 126-104
Author(s):  
M.A.S. Abdel Haleem
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence ◽  
Structural Aspects ◽  
Artistic Talent ◽  
Naguib Mahfouz

With a rich, productive career spanning over 60 years, culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, Naguib Mahfouz's literary works have naturally attracted numerous studies and critiques. These studies have covered a great many aspects of Mahfouz's creative writing, but, perhaps because of the secular, modern education Mahfouz received (both at school and in the Department of Philosophy in Cairo University), and his personal lifestyle, they have concentrated on the socialist, materialist, and structural aspects of his work. Perhaps because of this, one important aspect of his writing has largely escaped attention: his artistic use of the language of the Qur'an. Mahfouz does not signal that a given phrase or reference is Qur'anic, leaving it to blend with the text, and making it easy to miss the fact that the Qur'an played any part in Mahfouz's use of language. However, to a reader who knows the Qur'an by heart the presence of Qur'anic language in his works is obvious, and equally obvious is Mahfouz's artistic talent in using it. Eventually, he himself announced at the end of his life that he had always had an intimate interest in the Qur'an, read it daily, and benefited from it. This article seeks to demonstrate the ubiquitous presence of Qur'anic language in Mahfouz's works, and the skill and subtlety with which he used it.

New Morning: Optimism and Resilience in Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 378-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Small Town ◽  
Distance Runner ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Literary Works

Tony Richardson's major contribution to British and international cinema has been obscured by jejune prejudices over his small-town, north of England origins, his parallel career as a theatre director and his eclectic choice of film subjects. This article concentrates on his two most important contributions to the ‘British New Wave’ – A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – in order to demonstrate Richardson's ability to recreate dramatic and literary works as dynamic and innovative films.

“Christ’s mighty shrine above His martyr’s tomb”: Byron and Liszt’s Journey to Rome

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Paul W. Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Literary Works ◽  
The Real ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Byronic Hero ◽  
Public Enemy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Narrative Poem ◽  
Positive Force

The influence of Byron on Liszt was enormous, as is generally acknowledged. In particular the First Book of the Années de pèlerinage shows the poet’s influence in its choice of Byron epigraphs in English for four of the set of nine pieces. In his years of travel as a virtuoso pianist Liszt often referred to “mon byronisme.” The work by Byron that most affected Liszt is the long narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which was translated into many languages, including French. The word “pèlerinage” that replaced “voyageur” is a Byronic identity in Liszt’s thinking. The Byronic hero as Liszt saw him and imitated him in for example Mazeppa and Tasso is a figure who represented a positive force, suffering and perhaps a revolutionary, but definitely not a public enemy. Liszt’s life, viewed as a musical pilgrimage, led of course to Rome. Is it possible that Byron even influenced him in this direction? In this paper I try to give a portrait of the real Byron that hides behind the poseur of his literary works, and suggest that what drew Liszt to the English poet was precisely the man whom he sensed behind the artistic mask. Byron was not musical, but he was religious — as emerges from his life and his letters, a life which caused scandal to his English contemporaries. But today we can see that part of the youthful genius of the rebel Byron was his boldness in the face of hypocrisy and compromise — his heroism was simply to be true. In this we can see a parallel with the Liszt who left the piano and composed Christus. What look like incompatibilities are simply the connection between action and contemplation — between the journey and the goal. Byron, in fact, can help us follow the ligne intérieure which Liszt talked about in the 1830s.

A Passion for Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biancamaria Fontana
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Literary Works

This introductory chapter provides an account of Germaine de Staël's approach to politics that brings out the independence and originality of her contribution. Its main focus is the evolution of her views in the years 1789 to 1800, when she had the opportunity to take part (albeit intermittently) in French political life, and to set forth projects and strategies connected with it. The chapter touches only on Staël's best-known—and more widely studied—fictional and literary works, though naturally these do also have some political relevance. It has been suggested that the protracted exile into which she was forced during the empire was at the origin of Staël's major literary achievements, as it provided her with both the opportunity and the incentive to develop her true potential as a writer.

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