Mr Timothy Clark This is Me

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1. 1. The Richmond Review, Book Review, The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark reviewed by Amanda Jeremin Harris - 0719059836

   richmondreview.co.uk/books/the - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/8/2008   Last Visited: 3/8/2008

   The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   ...
   home : book reviews : The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   
   The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   ...
   Timothy Clark
   ...
   Timothy Clark Manchester University Press
   ...
   Timothy Clark's The Theory of Inspiration (another title commanding in its dogmatism) confines itself to this canon, however. Nonetheless, it does not minister to the needs of the pompous Reader Of Literature, as Bloom's book does. Instead, it gently teases out historical notions and accounts of inspiration, from the ancient Greek lyricists and rhapsodists, through renaissance neo-Platonism, enlightenment ambivalence and enthusiasm, romantic animism/'otherness' (horrid jargon, but descriptive), modernist and surrealist trauma. Clark ends with Celan and Derrida as, it seems, has literary theory.
   
   Clark makes sure to tell us that the psychological and psychoanalytic studies of inspiration from Harding onward 'blur distinctions between the arts and the sciences in misleading ways ... ' Indeed they do. (By the by, since we are effectively talking about conceptions of the metaphysical, we might follow Clark's lead and suggest that every literary theorist these days also mysteriously doubles as a qualified psychoanalyst, despite having forgone the training.)
   
   Clark puts his history across rather in the manner of Oliver Sacks's case studies.
   ...
   As Clark shows, Coleridge transposes the Jena Romantics of Germany into the English frame of reference with almost too great a feeling for their sense that inspiration is alien. The book demonstrates how this sense of otherness (there it is again) is a vein that runs its course right up through to the present, traumatising modernists and surrealists along the way.
   
   He also fascinates with his account of the transition from an ancient Greek oral poetic culture, to our present, written one. Clark's implied account of a hidden orality lurking within poetic textuality is perhaps not analogous to Graves's battle of the trees (where Graves suggests that an ancient matriarchal and overtaken alphabet lurks within the more obvious patriarchal one) in that Clark is sane, but the textual detective work is similar. Both accounts rely on second hand evidence, which is absolutely fine, but of course prohibits being definitive.
   
   Here are my three main complaints (and I want to emphasise that this is an outstanding work): 1), where are the Americans? There is a major interplay between American transcendentalism and the more European phenomenon. Clark gives only the briefest of nods in the direction of Emerson, whose 'transparent eye-ball' wafting supra-personally above the hills of New England is hugely relevant. I accept that the man's beliefs were frequently based in a misreading of Kant via Coleridge, but for Heaven's sake, he was a member of the American Swedenborg society, and close mates with Carlyle.

2. 2. The Richmond Review, Book Review index

   richmondreview.co.uk/books - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/2/2003   Last Visited: 11/18/2006

   by Timothy Clark

3. 3. The Richmond Review, Book Review, The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark reviewed by Amanda Jeremin Harris - 0719059836

   www.richmondreview.co.uk/books - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/14/2006   Last Visited: 12/7/2007

   The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   ...
   home : book reviews : The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   
   The Theory Of Inspiration by Timothy Clark
   ...
   Timothy Clark
   ...
   Timothy Clark Manchester University Press
   ...
   Timothy Clark's The Theory of Inspiration (another title commanding in its dogmatism) confines itself to this canon, however. Nonetheless, it does not minister to the needs of the pompous Reader Of Literature, as Bloom's book does. Instead, it gently teases out historical notions and accounts of inspiration, from the ancient Greek lyricists and rhapsodists, through renaissance neo-Platonism, enlightenment ambivalence and enthusiasm, romantic animism/'otherness' (horrid jargon, but descriptive), modernist and surrealist trauma. Clark ends with Celan and Derrida as, it seems, has literary theory.
   
   Clark makes sure to tell us that the psychological and psychoanalytic studies of inspiration from Harding onward 'blur distinctions between the arts and the sciences in misleading ways ... ' Indeed they do. (By the by, since we are effectively talking about conceptions of the metaphysical, we might follow Clark's lead and suggest that every literary theorist these days also mysteriously doubles as a qualified psychoanalyst, despite having forgone the training.)
   
   Clark puts his history across rather in the manner of Oliver Sacks's case studies.
   ...
   As Clark shows, Coleridge transposes the Jena Romantics of Germany into the English frame of reference with almost too great a feeling for their sense that inspiration is alien. The book demonstrates how this sense of otherness (there it is again) is a vein that runs its course right up through to the present, traumatising modernists and surrealists along the way.
   
   He also fascinates with his account of the transition from an ancient Greek oral poetic culture, to our present, written one. Clark's implied account of a hidden orality lurking within poetic textuality is perhaps not analogous to Graves's battle of the trees (where Graves suggests that an ancient matriarchal and overtaken alphabet lurks within the more obvious patriarchal one) in that Clark is sane, but the textual detective work is similar. Both accounts rely on second hand evidence, which is absolutely fine, but of course prohibits being definitive.
   
   Here are my three main complaints (and I want to emphasise that this is an outstanding work): 1), where are the Americans? There is a major interplay between American transcendentalism and the more European phenomenon. Clark gives only the briefest of nods in the direction of Emerson, whose 'transparent eye-ball' wafting supra-personally above the hills of New England is hugely relevant. I accept that the man's beliefs were frequently based in a misreading of Kant via Coleridge, but for Heaven's sake, he was a member of the American Swedenborg society, and close mates with Carlyle.