Wales and the Spirit: Reading Geoffrey Hill's Oraclau | Oracles

This article 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 Wales, with Welsh biculturalism...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hawlin, Stefan 1960- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Oxford University Press [2016]
In: Literature and theology
Year: 2016, Volume: 30, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-14
IxTheo Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
CD Christianity and Culture
KBF British Isles
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:This article 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 Wales, with Welsh biculturalism and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (lover of north Wales) at its core. Hill is himself a religious poet in the mode of Blake and 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 densely textured and 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.
ISSN:1477-4623
Contains:Enthalten in: Literature and theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1093/litthe/fru053