`Matter Matters': Topographical and Theological Space in the Poetry of Norman Nicholson

Author: Cooper, David

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 39, Numbers 1-2, 1 july 2009 , pp. 169-185(17)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $21.27 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

Drawing on recent spatial thinking in both literary and theological studies, this article explores the inextricable intertwining of Christian and topographical concerns in the work of the twentieth-century Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson (1914-87). The essay argues that Nicholson, in his early work, develops a regionally rooted incarnational poetics that is predicated upon a phenomenological understanding of being and dwelling. Central to this discussion is an examination of the way in which a dialectic of spatial boundedness and boundlessness underpins and problematizes Nicholson's Christian articulation of what it means to be-in-the-world. Through a spatial reading of Nicholson's early volumes, then, this article aims to open up conceptual thinking about the work of a poet who was supported and published by T. S. Eliot but who presently occupies a marginal position in the history of post-war British poetry.

Keywords: Christian; topographical; Norman Nicholson; incarnational poetics; phenomenological; boundedness; boundlessness; be-in-the-world; spatial reading

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Lancaster University

Publication date: 2009-07-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.