The ecstatic poetic tradition: a critical study from the ancients through Rumi, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson and Tagore

Description

Ecstatic beginnings -- The overture -- Ecstatic states of consciousness -- Historical outline -- The ancient poetics and aesthetics of ecstasy -- Autochthonous and modern ecstatic poetry -- Critical studies -- The whirling dervish : Rumi -- The power of imagination : William Wordsworth -- The body ecstatic : Walt Whitman -- The cracked mind : Emily Dickinson -- The wise man of the East : Rabindranath Tagore -- Critical implications -- Extra-literary implications -- Literary implications : a problematic rapture -- Ecstasy the Eudaimonic turn.;"This work is a critical study in four parts: a general inquiry into ecstatic states; an historical outline of the ecstatic poetic tradition; an intensive study of the five representative poets; and a discussion of critical implications, especially those bearing on psychology, sociology, and religion, as well as an analysis of ecstatic poetics and aesthetics in literary studies"--