"Hard it is to stir my tongue" : raiding the Otherworld for the elixir of poetry /
Tolley, Clive,author.
"Where does poetic inspiration come from? This has been a puzzle for as long as poetry has been around. This book surveys some of the ways poets have thought of their craft, focusing particularly on medieval sources which see the Otherworld as a fastness of poetic inspiration, whence it has to be raided."--Page 4 of cover.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-262) and index.
Introduction: the poet's craft -- Scandinavia: Óðinn's booty -- Wales: the cauldron of poetry -- Ireland: the spring of knowledge -- Northumbria: the kenotic inversion of tradition -- Greece: the metaleptic Otherworld -- Finland-Karelia: the chest of words -- Siberia: making the irreal real -- England of the Romantics: wresting the evanescent from oblivion -- Conclusion.
"Where does poetic inspiration come from? This has been a puzzle for as long as poetry has been around. This book surveys some of the ways poets have thought of their craft, focusing particularly on medieval sources which see the Otherworld as a fastness of poetic inspiration, whence it has to be raided."--Page 4 of cover.
Poetry
Poetry, Medieval
Poetry, Ancient
Inspiration in literature.
Mythology, Welsh, in literature
Mythology, Norse, in literature