Papers by Alexandra Finn-Atkins
Finn-Atkins 2 moments in ecstatic rapture. A second text, El Castillo Interior written in 1577, e... more Finn-Atkins 2 moments in ecstatic rapture. A second text, El Castillo Interior written in 1577, elaborates further the perfection of prayer through the metaphor of the soul as a castle containing seven mansions. J.M. Cohen's description of Saint Teresa in his introduction to The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila as a "self-willed and hysterically unbalanced woman" strangely resembles John Richard Roberts' comment on Crashaw as a "hysterical poet." 34 The quality of hysteria is an uncontrollable emotion transmitted through experience, a medium of acquiring spiritual knowledge that is praised by Saint Teresa and Richard Crashaw. While several critics dismiss Crashaw's tender verse as "indigestible," "perverse," "shocking" and "foreign," a few others, such as Kimberly Johnson, call him a neglected gem among the group of authors, such as John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Henry Vaughn, that are frequently referred to as the "metaphysical poets." 5 In the essay "Note on Richard Crashaw," T.S. Eliot elevates Crashaw's overall poetic performance above the two esteemed romantics, Keats and Shelley. Eliot notes that the image of the speaker in Crashaw's "The Teare" who yearns to bring a pillow "stuft with Downe of Angels wing" to the head of a tear is "almost the quintessence of an immense mass of 10 Austin Warren, Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque Sensibility.
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Papers by Alexandra Finn-Atkins