What separates truly fine writing from the merely competent? In this searching essay, a great master of the weird tale sets out to name the elusive quality he calls ecstasy.First published in 1902, this influential work of criticism finds Arthur Machen - the Welsh author famed for supernatural classics such as The Great God Pan - arguing his case through the voice of an unnamed Literary Hermit, a reclusive scholar of Barnsbury. For the Hermit, the mark of true art is not realism or instruction but a kind of rapture, a withdrawal from the ordinary that lifts prose and poetry toward the sublime. Wide-ranging and provocative, it remains one of the most original statements ever written on the aesthetics of imaginative literature.This edition features: An accessible presentation of Arthur Machen's landmark 1902 meditation on what raises writing to the level of true art. The complete argument of the Literary Hermit, tracing the quality of rapture across prose, poetry, and myth. An illuminating window on the aesthetic thought of a writer better known for his tales of horror and the supernatural. A rewarding read for students of criticism, Decadence, and the fin-de-siècle debate over the purpose of imaginative art.
What separates truly fine writing from the merely competent? In this searching essay, a great master of the weird tale sets out to name the elusive quality he calls ecstasy.First published in 1902, this influential work of criticism finds Arthur Machen - the Welsh author famed for supernatural classics such as The Great God Pan - arguing his case through the voice of an unnamed Literary Hermit, a reclusive scholar of Barnsbury. For the Hermit, the mark of true art is not realism or instruction but a kind of rapture, a withdrawal from the ordinary that lifts prose and poetry toward the sublime. Wide-ranging and provocative, it remains one of the most original statements ever written on the aesthetics of imaginative literature.This edition features: An accessible presentation of Arthur Machen's landmark 1902 meditation on what raises writing to the level of true art. The complete argument of the Literary Hermit, tracing the quality of rapture across prose, poetry, and myth. An illuminating window on the aesthetic thought of a writer better known for his tales of horror and the supernatural. A rewarding read for students of criticism, Decadence, and the fin-de-siècle debate over the purpose of imaginative art.
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