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Visionary Philology

Geoffrey Hill and the Study of Words

Matthew Sperling author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:27th Mar '14

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Visionary Philology cover

Interviewed in 1966, Geoffrey Hill said, 'Language contains everything you want - history, sociology, economics: it is a kind of drama of human destiny'. This book shows how the work of one of the major post-war writers in English has been charged by a mythological sense of language's historical drama, by reading the whole body of Hill's poetry from sixty years against a tradition of visionary poet-philologists that he himself has delineated. That line runs from the present-day editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, through Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Chenevix Trench in the Victorian era, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the early nineteenth century, and ultimately back to Saint Augustine's theory of language. Through detailed close readings of Hill's work and its scholarly inspirations, and extensive fresh archival research, new light is shed upon poetry's relation to lexicography, etymology, and theological understandings of language. Key themes include language's fallenness from prelapsarian origins, its infection and enrichment by original sin and error, the possible recovery of its pristine origins through surrogates such as music, Hebrew, or the language of angels, and its status as an arena of political and historical contestation. The book considers a wider range of Hill's writings, in greater detail, than criticism of his work has so far done, and it is the first to make substantial use of recently available archive materials. It thereby presents one of the fullest and most authoritative accounts of the work of a living writer in recent years.

Visionary Philology has performed an invaluable task in its patient account of a variety of abstruse and sometimes rebarbative ideas. It is one of the best guides to Hill's work currently available. * Alex Pestell, Review of English Studies *
Sperling demonstrates how the etymologies of Hill's rich vocabulary shimmer in harmonics around his chosen words. Hill routinely attracts praise including phrases that begin "the greatest living poet in..." which I will avoid, simply saying that for me, Hill is an essential figure in contemporary poetry. * Ian Duhig, Poetry *
Sperling's excellent Visionary Philology ... is a brilliant, sprightly text, which is a delight to read. * Alan Wall, The Fortnightly Review *
superb example of lively and rigorous scholarship, achieving a double whammy by making significant contributions to our understanding of both Hill and literary philology. * James Underwood, Modern Language Review *

ISBN: 9780198701088

Dimensions: 223mm x 154mm x 21mm

Weight: 406g

218 pages