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." |
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... walking arm in arm on the way to the madhouse , tears streaming down their faces , her straitjacket over his arm.2 “ Our love for each other , " Mary once acknowledged to her friend Sarah Stoddart , “ has been the tor- ment of our lives ...
... walks at these times are so much one's own , —the tall trees of Christ's , the groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted , and with open doors , inviting one to slip in unperceived , and pay a devoir to some Founder , or noble or royal ...
... walking amid their foliage ; and the odour of their old moth - scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard . ( 2:10 ) Phrases such as " first bloom " and " happy orchard ...
... walks unmolested , and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please . I seem admitted ad eun- dem . I fetch up past opportunities . I can rise at the chapel- bell , and dream that it rings for me . In moods of humility I can be a ...
... walking upon the earth " ( 2:90 ) , transforming the " ascending " biblical spirits into the " walking " old benchers . Elsewhere , in a canceled draft of John Woodvil , he describes The old Family Bible , with the pictures in it , The ...