Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb's Art of AutobiographyMore than Charles Lamb himself could ever know, the creation of Elia as his personal artistic voice was his way to endure the memories of September 22, 1796, a day of primal horror when his sister Mary in a fit of insanity killed their mother and destroyed the Lamb family. Throughout the rest of his life Lamb was faced with those memories , with deep-seated personal and career disillusionments. Yet through Elia he confronted his inner self to forge the essays that may be considered among the most brilliant and inimitable works in English letters. Gerald Monsman in this study abandons the customary chronological approach to Lamb's life in favor of a more incisive, open-ended discussion of the Elia essays. By a close textual examination of Lamb's language, he relates the essayist's use of symbol and autobiographical concerns. Monsman contends and demonstrates that "as sharply and as pertinently as any artistic voice, Elia, the most celebrated persona in the nineteenth century, focuses the problems inherent in the modern literary imagination." Elia's "textual identity is a function of the author's actual life, of losses and imperfections artistically utilized and harmonized, employed against themselves to produce the rehabilitating symbol." |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 100
Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography Gerald Monsman. Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer For Baby Christina Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer Charles Lamb's.
Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography Gerald Monsman. For Baby Christina Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer Charles Lamb's art of autobiography.
Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography Gerald Monsman. Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer Charles Lamb's art of autobiography Gerald Monsman Duke University Press Durham , N.C. 1984 1984 , Duke University Press Printed in the United States.
... Lamb's Art of Autobiography , " 50 ( Fall 1983 ) , 541-57 ( Copyright 1983 by The Johns Hopkins University Press ) , and to Criticism for permission to use " Charles Lamb's ' Enfranchised Quill ' : The Two First Essays of Elia , " 23 ...
Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography Gerald Monsman. Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer 1 Of Art and Life The literary image and Lamb's.