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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Poetry
Phantastes Chapter 5: Romance Of Sir Launfal, Thomas Chestre
Phantastes Chapter 5: Romance Of Sir Launfal, Thomas Chestre
German Romantic and Other Influences
A medieval poem of 1045 lines telling of a knight who loses status and wealth and who meets a beautiful woman who gives him love and wealth as long as he keeps her existence a secret. The motif of the lover’s prohibition appears in several medieval texts, and MacDonald makes use of this motif in this chapter.
Phantastes Chapter 5: Pygmalion, Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Phantastes Chapter 5: Pygmalion, Thomas Lovell Beddoes
German Romantic and Other Influences
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) was a Romantic poet intensely focused on death. His poem “Pygmalion” (1825) recounts the myth of the Cypriot sculptor who fell in love with the statue he carved. In this chapter, MacDonald echoes this myth.
Phantastes Chapter 4: Ballad Of Sir Aldingar, James Kinsley
Phantastes Chapter 4: Ballad Of Sir Aldingar, James Kinsley
German Romantic and Other Influences
A child ballad of various origins. Aldingar attempts to seduce the Queen, who spurns him and sets off Aldingar to falsely accuse the Queen of sleeping with a leper. The king believes Aldingar, and the Queen asks that a knight fight for her honor. Unable to find a knight, she relies on a four-year-old boy, who defeats Aldingar. On his deathbed he admits his accusation was false. The history of this ballad can be found in Paul Christopherson’s The Ballad of Sir Aldingar, its Origins and Analogues, Oxford UP, 1952
Phantastes Chapter 12: A Threefold Cord, Unknown
Phantastes Chapter 12: A Threefold Cord, Unknown
German Romantic and Other Influences
This poem appears in MacDonald’s A Threefold Cord (1883), where MacDonald is credited as contributor and editor. In this volume, individual authors are not credited. While some have thought that this passage is by MacDonald himself, Nick Page persuasively argues that the poem should be attributed to MacDonald’s friend Greville Ewing Matheson. See Page, Phantastes: Special Annotated Edition (Paternoster, 2008)
Phantastes Chapter 17/18: Exotics, Heinrich Heine
Phantastes Chapter 17/18: Exotics, Heinrich Heine
German Romantic and Other Influences
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a German poet whose poetry has a strong political focus. MacDonald includes several translations from Heine in Exotics (pp. 154-165), his book of translations from German and Italian poets (1876). The poems he includes resonate nicely with Phantastes.
Phantastes Chapter 1: Alastor; Or, The Spirit Of Solitude, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Phantastes Chapter 1: Alastor; Or, The Spirit Of Solitude, Percy Bysshe Shelley
German Romantic and Other Influences
A quest poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) published in 1816. The full title is “Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude.” MacDonald quotes lines 484-488 in which the Poet encounters his soulmate. Shelley’s poem is a major influence on Phantastes, and Shelley’s Preface to “Alastor” offers a nice gloss on MacDonald’s fantasy. “The poem entitled ‘Alastor’ may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, …
Phantastes Chapter 11: The Excursion, William Wordsworth
Phantastes Chapter 11: The Excursion, William Wordsworth
German Romantic and Other Influences
Lines 836-842 from Book II of William Wordsworth's The Excursion (1814).
Phantastes Chapter 9: Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Phantastes Chapter 9: Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
German Romantic and Other Influences
From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" (lines 47-49 and 53-58). Coleridge published the poem in 1802.
Phantastes Chapter 16: Life And The Ideal, Friedrich Von Schiller
Phantastes Chapter 16: Life And The Ideal, Friedrich Von Schiller
German Romantic and Other Influences
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a German writer, primarily known as a dramatist, poet, and literary critic. Das Ideal und das Leben (Life and the Ideal, 1795) is a philosophical poem. The Oxford Reference reports that the poem was “first published in 1795 in No. 9 of Die Horen, with the title ‘Das Reich der Schatten’. Schiller changed this in 1800 to ‘Das Reich der Formen’, and adopted the present title in 1804.” Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), writer and politician, translated the poem in 1844 as Ideal and Actual Life. Bulwer-Lytton began his novel Paul Clifford …
Phantastes Chapter 7: Ballad Of Sir Andrew Barton, Unknown
Phantastes Chapter 7: Ballad Of Sir Andrew Barton, Unknown
German Romantic and Other Influences
“Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton” dates from the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. It appears in the eighteenth-century collection of ballads and popular songs edited by Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). Sir Andrew Barton was a Scottish sea captain who engaged in a sea battle with two English ships. He was killed in the altercation, but became famous for his bravery.
Phantastes Chapter 13: I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart, John Suckling
Phantastes Chapter 13: I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart, John Suckling
German Romantic and Other Influences
Lines 13-18 from “I prithee send me back my heart” by the poet Sir John Suckling. Suckling (1609-1641) is associated with the Cavalier Poets, poets who supported King Charles I. Suckling is the inventor of the card game cribbage.
Phantastes Chapter 19: The Innocent Iii, Abraham Cowley
Phantastes Chapter 19: The Innocent Iii, Abraham Cowley
German Romantic and Other Influences
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was an English poet whose work echoes the metaphysical wit of John Donne. The lines quoted are lines 5-8 of “The Innocent III” (1647).
Phantastes Chapter 13: The Water Is Wide, Unknown
Phantastes Chapter 13: The Water Is Wide, Unknown
German Romantic and Other Influences
Lines are from an old Scottish ballad, “The Water is Wide,” dating from the seventeenth century. We note, for interest’s sake, that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sing a version of this song in the 1975 film Renaldo and Clara.
Phantastes Chapter 23: Astrophel: An Elegy, Or Friend’S Passion, For His Astrophill, Matthew Roydon
Phantastes Chapter 23: Astrophel: An Elegy, Or Friend’S Passion, For His Astrophill, Matthew Roydon
German Romantic and Other Influences
Matthew Roydon (1580-1622), Elizabethan poet and friend of Sidney’s. In 1593, Roydon published his elegy for Sidney: “Astrophel: An Elegy, or Friend’s Passion, for His Astrophill.” MacDonald quotes lines 103-106. “The lineaments of Gospell bookes,” suggests that Sidney’s face exhibited a spirituality of a kind found in the four gospels of the New Testament
Phantastes Chapter 20: The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Phantastes Chapter 20: The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
German Romantic and Other Influences
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), most famous for The Faerie Queene (1590; 1596), is a key influence on MacDonald generally and on Phantastes in particular. John Docherty writes that “MacDonald bases his upon the figure Phantastes living the forebrain of the ‘House of Alma' (the human body) in book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” (“Sources of Phantastes,” North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies, vol. 25, 2005, pages 16-28).