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Winged Words: Flight in Poetry and History

Winged Words: Flight in Poetry and History

Publié le par Gabriel Marcoux-Chabot (Source : University of Chicago Press website)


Piero BOITANI, Winged Words: Flight in Poetry and History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 240 p.
ISBN-10: 0-226-06561-8


SUMMARY

Flight has always fascinated human minds, but until a century ago itremained a dream—the exclusive domain of birds, gods, and mythologicalheroes. From the myths of the ancients to the poetry of Pindar andYeats, Winged Words traces the imprint of the human impulse to fly from premodern times to the age of terrorism in both literature and history.

PieroBoitani begins his analysis with an account of the way the myths ofPegasus and Icarus have persisted from classical to twentieth-centurypolitics and literature. He then takes up the figure of Hermes; theroles of halcyons and eagles in classical, biblical, and laterliteratures; and literary response to Pieter Brueghel’s The Fall ofIcarus. Honing in on modern figures and concerns, Boitani also offers afascinating discussion of author-pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry andconcludes with a meditation on the flight of the hijacked airliners on9/11. Throughout, Winged Word brings a remarkable range of men ofaction, politicians, theologians, writers, and artists into dialoguewith each other: Shakespeare with T. S. Eliot, Horace with Ovid,Leonardo with Milton, Leopardi with Mallarmé, Saint-Exupéry withFaulkner and Rilke, and the Ulysses of Homer with the Ulysses of Dante.Ultimately, by showing how writers and fliers have looked to theancients for inspiration, Boitani testifies to the modern relevance ofpoetry and the classics.