This 1952 book is an inquiry into the relations in origin between literature and inspiration, based on a study of the practices of seers in modern communities where oral literature sill survives, and of the records of primitive poetry in the West and North. Mrs Chadwick discusses the universal reverence accorded to poets, musicians, seers, or prophets, the training they underwent, the methods of ecstasy, and the remarkable similarities of their messages in remote and different parts of the world.

This carefully crafted ebook: "Europe A Prophecy (Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations of William Blake)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Blake's illuminated books, produced from 1783-1795, are remarkable examples of complex syntheses: of form - poetry and painting; and of subject - the real with the mythical. Blake created his own mythological creations to populate his poems and paintings: concepts and ideas became personified into universal representations. He used these mythological characters to explain and act out his singular view of history. Blake divided the nature of man into four personified elements: "Los, the imagination and eventual source of redemption; Urizen, the reason and vengeful Jehovah of the Old Testament as opposed to the merciful Christ of the New; Luvah, the senses; and Tharmas, the emotions". Each of these characters has an emanation, or female "offshoot", who is commonly a negative character attempting to dominate her male counterpart. "William Blake (1757 – 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

The books of the Latter Prophets have traditionally been treated as persuasive speeches, and interpreted according to their rhetoric. At the same time, interpreters recognize the poetic form of much prophecy. This study takes up the notion of the 'prophet' as 'poet', focusing on word-play in Hosea and on the lyrical plot of that book; the case is made for treating Hosea as a stark, full-length poem of inexhaustible power.

Addresses the relationship between the language of ritual and poetic language

This book argues that the most profound and far-reaching effects of Buddhism on Chinese culture occurred at the level of practice, specifically in religious rituals designed to cure people of disease, demonic possession, and bad luck. This practice would leave its most lasting imprint on the liturgical tradition of Taoism. In focusing on religious practice, the book provides a corrective to traditional studies of Chinese religion, which overemphasize metaphysics and spirituality.

The Romantic era in England and Germany saw a sudden renewal of prophetic modes of writing. Biblical prophecy and, to a lesser extent, classical oracle again became viable models for poetry and even for journalistic prose. Notably, this development arose out of the new-found freedom of biblical interpretation that began in the mid-eighteenth century, as the Bible was increasingly seen to be a literary and mythical text. Taking Walter Benjamin’s thinking about history as a point of departure, the author shows how the model for Romantic prophecy emerges less as a prediction of the future than as a call to change in the present, even as it quotes, at key turns, texts from the past. After surveying developments in eighteenth-century biblical hermeneutics, as well as the numerous instances of prophetic eruption in Romantic poetry, the book culminates in close readings of works by Blake, Hölderlin, and Coleridge. Each of these writers interpreted the Bible in strong, variously radical and conservative ways, and each reworked prophetic texts in often startling fashion. The author’s reading of Blake focuses on the complex temporal and rhetorical dynamics at work in a prophetic tradition, with attention paid to the key mediating figure of Milton. The chapter on Hölderlin investigates the truth-claim of poetry and the consequences of Hölderlin’s insight into the necessarily figural character of poetry. The analysis of Coleridge correlates his theory of allegory and symbol with his theory and practice of political writing, which often relies on mobilizing prophetic authority. Together, the readings force us to reexamine the claims and practices of Romantic poets and thinkers and their ideas and ideologies, not without engendering some allegorical resonance with issues in our own time.