Hawlin, Stefan (2014) 'Wales and the Spirit: Reading Geoffrey Hill's Oraclau | Oracles'. Literature and Theology, 30 (1). pp. 1-14. ISSN 0269-1205 (PRINT); 1477-4623 (ONLINE)
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Abstract
This essay gives an account of the overall shape and purpose of Geoffrey Hill’s richly detailed poem Oraclau | Oracles (2010), and provides a heuristic by which to read its individual sections. The poem emerges as a rich meditation on the culture and spirit of Welsh-language Wales, with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (lover of north Wales) at its core. Hill is himself a religious poet in the mode of Blake or Hopkins, the apparent complexity or eccentricity of his style being one of the ways in which he seeks to rearrange our vision of the world. The poem’s dense, highly formalistic manner is part of its attack on contemporary materialism. Symbolically Wales becomes a locus of resistance to the predominant secularist values of England.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Geoffrey Hill; 21st-century poetry; contemporary poetry; Wales; Welsh language; spirituality |
| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PR English literature |
| Divisions: | School of Humanities & Social Sciences > English Literature > English Literature |
| Depositing User: | Stefan Hawlin |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Feb 2019 15:22 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Feb 2019 15:22 |
| URI: | http://bear.buckingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/293 |
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