T.H. White: The Poet Behind the Fiction

Author: Nelson M.

Source: Neophilologus, Volume 83, Number 4, October 1999 , pp. 653-659(7)

Publisher: Springer

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $47.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

One of T.H. White's answers to the question of how to deal with the pain of his own early life (one particularly vivid memory cited by his biographer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, involves a vision of his father and mother standing on either side of his crib while his father threatens to shoot him in the head, while another whole set of memories relates to his difficult public school experience) seems to have come from a recognition that giving that pain form through skillful use of words could assert a measure of control. One of his strategies seems to have been to use words in ways partly determined by conscious, or unconscious, adherence to convention. By means of this strategy, White developed an imaginative capability that could transcend the limitations of human experience and learned to go beyond the limitations of present human experience, to look deep into the past, or in other words, as Merlyn put it, "to learn something."

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: University of Florida, English Department, P.O. Box 117310, Gainesville, FL 32611-7310, USA

Publication date: 1999-10-01