Charles Williams: Alchemy And Integration
by Gavin Ashenden
On This Page
Description
An examination of the tumultuous inner life of this poet and writer He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, deeply admired by C. S. Lewis, inspirational for W. H. Auden in his journey to faith, and a literary sparring partner for J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet half a century after his death, much of Charles Williams's life and work remains an enigma. The questions that arose from his immersion in Rosicrucian and hermetic culture and ideology-central to understanding Williams's thought and art remain show more provocatively unexplored. For a decade of his early adulthood, Williams was a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, a form of neo-Rosicrucianism. There is widespread confusion about its nature, which is to be expected given that this was a semisecret society. Though Williams left his formal association with it behind, it enriched and informed his imaginative world with a hermetic myth that expressed itself in an underlying ideology and metaphysics. In Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration, Gavin Ashenden explores both the history behind the myths and metaphysics Williams was to make his own and the hermetic culture that influenced him. He examines and interprets its expressions in Williams's novels, poetry, and the development of his ideas and relates these elements to Williams's unpublished letters to his platonic lover, Celia, written toward the end of his life. Since one of the foremost ideas in Williams's work is the interdependence or co-inherence of both our humanity and the creation, understanding the extent to which he lived and achieved this in his own life is important. Williams's private correspondence with Celia is of particular interest both for its own sake, since it was previously unknown, and for the insight it offers into his personality and muse. show lessTags
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
1 Work 16 Members
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Charles Williams
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature, Fantasy
- DDC/MDS
- 828.91209 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English miscellaneous writings English miscellaneous writings 1900- English miscellaneous writings 1900-1999 English miscellaneous writings 1900-1945 Individual authors not limited to or chiefly identified with one specific form.
- LCC
- PR6045 .I5 .Z54 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 16
- Popularity
- 1,514,393
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
