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Telling Tales brings D.J. Enright's two renowned poetical sequences together in one volume. The first, Paradise Illustrated, is a contemporary telling of Milton's Adam and Eve and their fall from grace in Paradise. The second is A Faust Book, again a retelling of a perenially relevant tale of mankind's arrogance and ambition. Both sequences are immensely comical, witty, outrageous, and sad. They stem from both Enright's knowledge of the work of his great predecessors--Milton, Goethe, and Marlowe--and from his own wry and sympathetic understanding of life. Also included is a new Foreword written by Enright specially for this edition that introduces the two the sequences.
D.J. Enright reinterprets the foundational myths of the Fall of Man and the Faustian bargain through a lens of contemporary irony and wit. In these two poetic sequences, Enright navigates the moral and existential dilemmas of his archetypal subjects, Adam, Eve, and Faust. He positions these figures within frameworks that challenge their traditional gravity, utilizing a conversational yet precise verse style to examine human ambition and frailty. The narrative voice remains detached yet observant, forcing the reader to confront the absurdity inherent in these classic tales of transgression and consequence.
Discussion often centers on Enright's ability to balance reverence for his literary predecessors with a distinctly modern, skeptical sensibility. Readers frequently highlight the accessibility of the verse, noting that the poet avoids overly dense academic language in favor of sharp, clear imagery. Critics often point to the humor embedded in the sequences as a mechanism for exposing the inherent folly of the characters' choices. The work is widely regarded as a successful exercise in recontextualizing canonical narratives for a contemporary audience without losing the core tension of the original myths.
Page Count:
96
Publication Date:
1997-11-20
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192880292
ISBN-13:
9780192880291
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