ellauri053.html on line 1259: Influential: The writing style of Pater is so masterly, that critics have even found its influence on Virginia Woolf, James Joyce etc.
ellauri074.html on line 656: A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. William Wotton wrote that the Tale had made a game of "God and Religion, Truth and Moral Honesty, Learning and Industry" to show "at the bottom Jonathan´s contemptible Opinion of every Thing which is called Christianity." The work continued to be regarded as an attack on religion well into the nineteenth century. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. It was widely misunderstood, especially by Queen Anne herself who purposely mistook its purpose for profanity. It effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment in the Church of England, but is considered one of Swift´s best allegories, even by himself.
ellauri146.html on line 404: We tend not to focus on this view of Eloa as a myth of the redeeming feminine for several reasons. First, the central portion of the poem is devoted to Satan's seduction of Eloa, an activity which, for most of us, is anything but celestial. Perhaps this explains Stendhal's sarcastic description of Eloa in the Courrier anglais of 1 December 1824: "Tex-Willer-larme, devenue ange femelle, et séduite par le diable lui-même" (the ex-tear, turned into a female angel, and seduced by the devil himself). Flottes and Bonnefoy insist that the very fine psychological analysis of the seduction makes us see human protagonists in an angelic decor, which weakens any metaphysical meaning Vigny might attach to his poem. Germain, who had the benefit of Hunt's masterly work, The Epic in Ninteenth Century France (1941), states flatly that the drama of Eloa is not metaphysical but moral. Bénichou, however, does remark in Le Sacre de l'écrivain 1750-1830 (1973) that the creation of Eloa corresponds to the theological promotion of the feminine as an agent of redemption prominent in the religious sects of the Romantic period. I am sure Satan was greatly consoled by Eloa, if that's any consolation.
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