Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness

O'Leary, Peter

ISBN 10: 0819565644 / ISBN 13: 9780819565648

Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 2002

About this Item

Underlining, notation, and artistic doodling throughout. Q1.

Seller Inventory # 019738

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819565644
• ISBN 13: 9780819565648
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Paperback Printing.
• Condition: Fair
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Poetry
  • Religion / Spiritual

About this title

Synopsis

Brings together the study of literature with the psychology and history of religions.

Robert Duncan's poetic creativity does not exist without a language of illness, nor the revelation and insight that such language generates. This ground-breaking interdisciplinary work is one of the first book-length studies of Robert Duncan's poetry, and it includes a treatment of his influences (H.D. and Freud) and those he influenced (Nathaniel Mackey and John Taggart). Through close readings of crucial poems, Peter O'Leary shows how Duncan's poetry locates a gnostic insight expressed through a language of illness in the realms of religion. Gnosticism is a doctrine of salvation by knowledge.

In addition to studying Duncan's poetry and his life, O'Leary considers the psychological impact Freud's ideas of the unconscious and dream interpretation had on the poet. O'Leary continues with an analysis of Duncan's work in light of the theories of shamanism put forth by religion historian Mircea Eliade. Along the way, O'Leary undertakes detailed discussions of gnosticism, hermeticism, spiritualism, psychoanalysis, shamanism and religions of the African diaspora.

From the Publisher

6 x 9 trim. 5 b/w illus.