Description
Book SynopsisThe Form of Love explores what poetry can articulate about love that philosophy cannot. Reading seven poems, this book shows how figures ranging from Donne to Dickinson use poetic form to transform philosophy’s concern to convey truth about love into the concern to create a virtual experience of love.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Form of Love: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Closeness of Loving Reading | 1
1. Disjunctive Love: Philosophical Project and Poetic Experience in Donne’s “The Ecstasy” | 29
2. Obscure Love: Virtual Masochisms in Philips’s “Friendship’s Mysterys” | 56
3. Forgetting to Love: Problems of Praise in Herbert’s “The Flower” | 78
4. Loving Rhyme: Reading Mastery in Crashaw’s “The Flaming Heart” | 98
5. Green Love: Lost in Marvell’s “The Garden” | 117
6. Love and/or Lyric: Dickinson’s “I cannot live with You -” | 145
Acknowledgments | 171
Notes | 173
Index | 209
