Harold Toliver

Some books aren't what they seem at first, but this one is more devious than most in following up, in personal, episodic terms, what Mythic Worlds and Scanning and Sizing the Universe find true of natural history's powers and incredible extent.

Some books aren't what they seem at first, but this one is more devious than most in following up, in personal, episodic terms, what Mythic Worlds and Scanning and Sizing the Universe find true of natural history's powers and incredible extent.

Combining philosophy, science, and literature, Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In examines lingering misconceptions of world history as a continuing source of international tension. Awareness of the natural continuum, currently gauged at some 13.8 billion years overall, disarms sectarian zealotry and, in retrospect, explains some of the difficulties the literary and philosophical traditions have had in accommodating their beliefs to what undeniably exists. To this day, beliefs incompatible with natural history continue to intensify nationalism and support terrorist movements. As a work mainly in natural philosophy, this book uses the consensus natural continuum to critique the more prominent and durable misconceptions.

Combining philosophy, science, and literature, Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In examines lingering misconceptions of world history as a continuing source of international tension. Awareness of the natural continuum, currently gauged at some 13.8 billion years overall, disarms sectarian zealotry and, in retrospect, explains some of the difficulties the literary and philosophical traditions have had in accommodating their beliefs to what undeniably exists. To this day, beliefs incompatible with natural history continue to intensify nationalism and support terrorist movements. As a work mainly in natural philosophy, this book uses the consensus natural continuum to critique the more prominent and durable misconceptions.

One of the faults in philosophy generally―even the philosophy of science―is ignoring the extended scale of the natural continuum and putting in its place something Anthropomorphic. This book suggests a means of keeping score that puts common situations, places, topography, and even home ground in the context of that continuum, the whole of atomic matter and its history. As shown here, the discrepancy between normal measurements and what actually exists is similar to that between 'yardsticks' and 'light years'

One of the faults in philosophy generally―even the philosophy of science―is ignoring the extended scale of the natural continuum and putting in its place something Anthropomorphic. This book suggests a means of keeping score that puts common situations, places, topography, and even home ground in the context of that continuum, the whole of atomic matter and its history. As shown here, the discrepancy between normal measurements and what actually exists is similar to that between 'yardsticks' and 'light years'

Thorne's Journey HomeBy: Harold ToliverThorne's Journey Home focuses on the terrain and Indian tribal territories in the mid-nineteenth century in northern California. Thorne, after many months searching for gold, journeys home through such territories. He encounters other journeyers on the road, some friendly, some hostile, and discovers two children, survivors of a massacre. Interspersed are segments of Thorne's brother as he chronicles his experience with the Civil War, their Boston heritage, and his southern wife. Thorne's journey is indicative of a time in American history when the west was untamed.About the AuthorHarold Toliver wrote primarily in literary theory and criticism until retirement, when science and history were added in a series of books linking the humanities and arts to advances in physics, astronomy, and other reality-defining studies.

No seventeenth-century poet was more popularly read or imitated than George Herbert, and none represents the lyric implications of the Christian narrative more fully, with the possible exception of Milton. There is therefore a growing perception that George Herbert deserves to be placed more in the mainstream of literary history and that romanticism and modernism are not exclusively post-Milton phenomena. As one of the centers of new historicist interest, The Temple has of late been seated in the context of church controversies, Reformation thought, and the politics of the 1620s. Yet previous studies have been reluctant to widen their focus to locate Herbert within the intellectual movements of the earlier seventeenth century, apart from doctrinal issues and the social idiom that he often uses.Harold Toliver explores the implications for Herbert's lyrics of the Christian narrative—the secular labyrinth and the parables' guiding rope, the conflicts between heart and mind, the agonies of postponement, intervals and abstract totality, the visible church and its calendar, the concept of an ending, and Herbert's adaptation of the sonnet form. To establish Herbert's place among other seventeenth-century writers who make use of the Christian narrative, Toliver provides close readings of several poems and new configurations that reveal the pressure of the narrative whole on lyric moments as well as the bearing of the times on them. Herbert had difficulty salvaging any interest in a university or a secular career once he turned to sacred poetry. He also subordinated all phases of the Bible as a cultural history to the single pattern imposed by the Pauline reduction of the Bible to a single story. As part of Toliver's assessment of Herbert's intellectual landscape and active engagement in alternatives, the treatment polarizes that Pauline method and the Hebrew Bible's anecdotal, political, and social detail.

This is an analysis of the literary art of recapturing the past as the artist perceives it. By clearly distinguishing different ways of creating a past--in fiction, history, and other arts--Toliver enriches our understanding of literary strategies. The Past that Poets Make examines such questions as how a fictional narrative differs from other ways of seeing a past time; to what extent literature is nontemporal, transcending its time, and to what extent it is tied to the institutions and traditions of its era; how given works conjure up a sense of time; and how fictional narratives function as transmitters of ideas to societies prepared to absorb them.