Customer Reviews

The Image of the City (and Other Essays)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Eerdmans, Regent, and now Apocryphile Press have taken up the mantle of bringing Charles Williams into print, and I number myself among the small but avid coterie of grateful readers. Should Williams be remembered for something, it would be his novels. But his essays, although virtually unknown, are a close second. This paperback reprints an Oxford hardback from 1958 which for some reason has become nearly impossible to find. The inner note says it's not for sale in the UK, so the Oxford or some other version may still exist there. For Inklings fans elsewhere, however, this republication is a cause for rejoicing.

I originally met Charles Williams through some writings of Dorothy L. Sayers, but through this book (in the original Oxford edition), I met St.s Augustine and Athanasius, Lady Julian of Norwich, Gerard Manley Hopkins and D.H. Lawrence, all through Williams' eyes. He is like a lively host at a cocktail party who is the only thing everyone has in common, and runs around making introductions. Lady Julian and Lawrence, incidentally, are in the same piece, at the same party, as it were, "Sensuality and Substance", in which Williams as host is at his best. But that could also be said for "Blake and Wordsworth", "The Jews", and "Rejoice in the Lamb," to name a few personal favorites.

If that were not enough, included in the 270 pages is a sixty page introduction by poet Anne Ridler, who compiled the Oxford edition. She also compiled a 1961 Oxford paperback called Charles Williams: Selected Writings, which includes about ten of the same essays along with Williams' play, "Seed of Adam", and a number of selections from Williams' two cycles of Arthurian poetry, Taliessin Through Logres, and The Region of the Summer Stars. Regent has recently reprinted the Collected Plays, and one hopes someone will soon bring back the Arthurian cycles, last published in the out of print Eerdmans combined edtion.

The contents of Image of the City (and Other Essays) are as follows:

INTRODUCTION

I. LITERARY SUBJECTS

Victorian Narrative Verse

Lord Macaulay

Landor

The New Milton

John Milton

Two Brief Essays on Shakespearian Topics

Alexander Pope

Rejoice in the Lamb

Gerard Hopkins

Sound and Variations

Religious Drama

Blake and Wordsworth

II. THE INCARNATION

Sensuality and Substance

Natural Goodness

The Index of the Body

St. John

Augustine and Athanasius

III. THE CITY

The Image of the City in English Verse

The Redeemed City

Anthropotokos

The Free Act

Church and State

Antichrist and the City's Laws

The Liturgy

Vergil

A Dialogue on Hierarchy

IV. PARDON AND JUSTICE

The Cross

The doctrine of Largesse

John Calvin

The Image of Man

V. EXCHANGE AND THE AFFIRMATIVE WAY

The Way of Exchange

The Way of Affirmation

One Way of Love

The Jews

The Society of Jesus

The Parable of the Wedding Garment

VI. ON THE ARTHURIAN MYTH

Introductory Note

Notes on the Arthurian Myth

The Making of Taliessin

The Chances of Myth

Malory and the Grail Legend

COLLECTS COMPOSED FOR A MARRIAGE

A BIBLIOGRAPHY