On the Shore of Nothingness: Space, Rhythm, and Semantic Structure in Religious Poetry and Its Mystic-Secular CounterpartThis book studies how poetic structure transforms verbal imitations of religious experience into concepts. The book investigates how such a conceptual language can convey such non-conceptual experiences as meditation, ecstasy or mystic insights. Briefly, it explores how the poet, by using words, can express the 'ineffable'. It submits to close reading English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Armenian and Hebrew texts, from the Bible, through medieval, renaissance, metaphysical, and baroque poetry, to romantic and symbolistic poetry. |
From inside the book
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... phrase “self-annihilation” may be replaced by “an emptiness created by the soul in order that it may be filled by ... phrases as “in nothingness do sink”, “swoon to death”, and “Death is Life's high meed”. These excerpts exemplify the ...
... phrase “self-annihilation” may be replaced by “an emptiness created by the soul in order that it may be filled by ... phrases as “in nothingness do sink”, “swoon to death”, and “Death is Life's high meed”. These excerpts exemplify the ...
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... phrase “floats on high” to this effect will be illuminated by a comment by Maud Bodkin, speaking of “flight as it is known in dreams”, with reference to a very different image in Dante's “Paradiso'', characterising its effect as “the ...
... phrase “floats on high” to this effect will be illuminated by a comment by Maud Bodkin, speaking of “flight as it is known in dreams”, with reference to a very different image in Dante's “Paradiso'', characterising its effect as “the ...
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... phrase “as a cloud floating high” is introduced, as it were, merely as a simile for loneliness; by the same token, it suggests effortlessness as well as elements of the spiritual experience toward which it leads. Our second point ...
... phrase “as a cloud floating high” is introduced, as it were, merely as a simile for loneliness; by the same token, it suggests effortlessness as well as elements of the spiritual experience toward which it leads. Our second point ...
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... (phrase, clause) may converge with prosodic units (e.g., line), or diverge from them. The presence of a rhyme pattern ... phrase structures is segmented into octosyllabic verse lines with a compulsory caesura after the fourth syllable ...
... (phrase, clause) may converge with prosodic units (e.g., line), or diverge from them. The presence of a rhyme pattern ... phrase structures is segmented into octosyllabic verse lines with a compulsory caesura after the fourth syllable ...
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... phrases as “mystic poem”, or “ecstatic poem”. We designate by these adjectives some aesthetic quality. Hepburn (1968) distinguished, with reference to aesthetic objects, between experiencing an emotion on the one hand, and detecting an ...
... phrases as “mystic poem”, or “ecstatic poem”. We designate by these adjectives some aesthetic quality. Hepburn (1968) distinguished, with reference to aesthetic objects, between experiencing an emotion on the one hand, and detecting an ...
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On the Shore of Nothingness: Space, Rhythm, and Semantic Structure in ... Reuven Tsur Limited preview - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract Andreas Gryphius aspects Auschwitz Baroque boundaries chapter characteristic cognitive Cognitive Poetics composition of place conception conceptual metaphor consciousness context contrast convergent device diffuse discussed Donne Donne’s ecstatic effect Ehrenzweig elements emotional evoke excerpt fire focus function gestalt-free Hebrew Herbert’s human Ibn Gabirol imagery instance intense kind language light man’s Martz meaning meditation mental metaphor metaphysical poetry metonymy Milton mystic experience mystic poetry nature Neo-Platonic nothingness noun numinous objects one’s orientation Paradise Lost paradox passage pattern perceived perception periphrasis phrase physical Platonic poem poet poetic position potentials predicate present prosodic quatrain quoted reader reality reference reinforced religious poetry rhyme rhythm romantic romantic poetry Rudolf Otto semantic sense sestet sonnet soul spatial speech sounds stanza structure sublime suggests syllables syntactic thing-free tion transcendence trochaic Tsur Tyger typically undifferentiated verb verbal verse visual shapes witty words Wordsworth’s world picture