In this lecture Dr. Quan Le focuses on the I Ching, the first Confucian Classic (of five: Yi Jing, Shu Jing, Shi Jing, Chun Qiu and Zhou Li) which magnificently embodies the poetic principle famously outlined by Shelley, centuries later, in his Defense of Poetry which re-asserted that Poets are the true legislators of the world….
Tag: Poetry
For Keats’ 200th Anniversary – Great Odes and the Sublime: Commemorating the Life of John Keats
By Dan Leach When John Keats died in Rome on Feb. 23, 1821, at the age of 25, the world lost one of the greatest poetic geniuses it had ever known, and although much of what would undoubtedly have been his greatest work was unfinished, and as much scattered about in, or only hinted at…
Through Beauty’s Morning-Gate to the Land of Knowledge: RTF Poetry Symposium
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from Heaven to Earth, from Earth to Heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.” – William Shakespeare (A…
Beyond the Lines : ‘Mending Wall’ – Robert Frost and the Good Neighbor Poetry
by Gerald Therrien [The following is a transcript of the above lecture as part of the RTF symposium “The Role of Art in Shaping a Sovereign Citizenry“.] Mending Wall is a nice poem that also tells a fun little story, about someone, about his neighbor and about a wall. Frost takes this old saying, that…
Clarity vs. Obscurity II: The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared
By Adam Sedia For Part I to this series click here. In my last essay, I discussed the difference between classical and modernist poetry as a difference of worldviews. Classicism views the art as a vehicle to reveal universal truths, while modernism denies such truths and instead views the primary purpose of poetry as inducing…
Clarity vs. Obscurity I: The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared
By Adam Sedia Classical and modern poetry are inarguably different. Indeed, modernism’s chief boast is its break with classicism and tradition more broadly. The difference is palpable in even the most cursory reading of a classical poem alongside a modernist one. Yet in what does the difference lie? It might be tempting to follow Justice…
Spenser and Marlowe – God’s Spies
By Gerald Therrien “Come, let’s away to prison:We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laughAt gilded butterflies, and hear poor roguesTalk of court news; and we’ll talk with them…
The Poetic Principle as a Force of Universal History
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Gerald Therrien addresses the question of morality’s relationship with creative genius and how this uniquely human power allows us to translate discoveries of human nature and the universe into new forms of action and artistry that both elevates our culture while extending the influence of a mortal life infinitely…
Towards An Age of Creative Reason Symposium
To register for upcoming RTF lecture series, please contact info@risingtidefoundation.net Today, perhaps more so than at any time in history, we are experiencing a divide between what is considered to be the “domain” or “confinement” of art as wholly separate from the domain of “politics.” The irony of such a perception is its failure to…
Cervantes and His Age: Don Quixote and a Spain in Crisis
For this lecture from the Rising Tide Foundation Symposium “Storytelling, Mythmaking, and the Shaping of Universal History” Adam Sedia will go over the relevance of Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” for today. Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote is commonly considered the first modern novel. It certainly is one of the most beloved — it has more translations…