Customer Reviews

New Perspectives on the Life and Art of Richard Crashaw

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These "new perspectives" on Richard Crashaw are already over 20 years old...
yet they are still cutting edge scholarship and the best out there.
I don't think it's too much to hope that somebody else somewhere still
cares about this truly amazing metaphysical poet...After all, scholarship
on John Donne is still going strong, including a widely-reviewed (and widely
available) recent biography...Why should there be no interest in a 17th
century English Catholic poet whose work still has the power to shock,
enchant, and inspire?

Thankfully almost none of the essays in this book are at all dry -- many of them
point out the "Protestant" bias against Crashaw that has affected literary views
of his poetry throughout the centuries. Perhaps the best essay begins with
a Crashaw epigram that readers have always found both mysterious and disturbing:

Suppose he had been Tabled at thy Teates,
Thy hunger feels not what he eates:
Hee'l have his Teat e're long (a bloody one)
The Mother then must suck the Son.

The analysis provided of this poem is both subtle and clarifying. Anyone with an
interest in the greatest of English poetry -- or interested in the Catholic faith
in England -- will be glad that they managed to track down this book and this
wonderful poet who still deserves to be read with understanding and delight.