The Truth of Imagination : An Introduction to Visionary Poetry

Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: The Truth of Imagination....Pages 1-15 The Poetry of Vision....Pages 16-50 Front Matter....Pages 51-51 Milton’s Inner Journey....Pages 53-78 Milton’s Christianity and the Birth of the Ego....Pages 79-95 Front Matter....Pages 97-97 Blake, Initiation, and The Book of Thel....Pages 99-122 The Devil for a Companion — Goethe and Shelley....Pages 123-148 From Prometheus Unbound to The Portal of Initiation: Shelleyan Themes in Steiner’s Mystery-Play....Pages 149-164 The Two Lives of W. B. Yeats....Pages 165-201 Epilogue The Tower....Pages 202-214 Back Matter....Pages 215-238 The force of the visionary thought of classic poets is re-evaluated in this text, which makes connections between Milton or Shelley, Blake or Yeats and modern esoteric ideas. Traditional forms of apocalypse and gnosis are also discussed in relation to literature, and new theories formulated.