Wylie, Alex (2011) Eros in Geoffrey Hill's Scenes from Comus. English: Journal of the English Association, 60 (230). pp. 198-211.

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Abstract

This article explores some of the sources, poetic and philosophical, of Hill's recent book-length poem Scenes from Comus, with particular emphasis on the interrogations of language, selfhood, and ethics which drive the work. Hill's notion of ‘eros’, as described in recent criticism written in the same period as Scenes from Comus, is at the heart of this book-length poem, and provides a key to understanding his ethical approach in the work. The essay also describes some of the correspondences between Scenes from Comus and John Milton's masque of 1634 known as ‘Comus’. Hill's view of the poet in relation to the community, a relationship which finds its correlate in the relationship between Self and Other, is closely related to this more subjective notion of eros. The article refers to Emmanuel Levinas, as well as Hill's recent work on T. S. Eliot and F. H. Bradley, to interrogate this relationship between the personal and the civic in the erotic trope, and in the poet's position as eccentric figure more generally.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1093/english/efr003
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1010 Poetry P Language and Literature > PR English literature
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/4071

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