angelism


Subject: angelism
From: Farrell O'gorman (fogorman@EMAIL.UNC.EDU)
Date: Mon Nov 29 1999 - 20:04:58 EST


I think the term "angelism" originates with Jacques Maritain's -The Dream
of Descartes-, was picked up by Allen Tate in the 1940s (see his essay
"The Angelic Imagination" on Poe), and came to Percy via his reading
of both Tate and Maritain directly. Tate's wife Caroline Gordon actually
accused Percy of "angelism" himself when she read a draft of his first
novel in 1952 and saw that it had to do with basically "disembodied"
thoughts of the protagonist--philosophy rather than fiction. Gordon
paraphrased Maritain in calling angelism "the sin of the age."

Farrell O'Gorman

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Marshall Smith wrote:

> Could be off base, but I've considered angelism to be the philosophically
> contrived separation of the rational faculty from the rest of existence. I
> haven't seen it called "angelism" outside of Percy's work.
>
> Marshall Smith
>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Thu Jan 11 2001 - 12:52:24 EST