Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

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PENGUIN BOOKS
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
At Melpham in Suffolk the tomb of the great seventh-century missionary Eorpwald was excavated in 1912 by Professor Stokesay and found to contain a pagan figure of a gross and most unchristian form. As a young man, Gerald Middleton was near the scene of this dramatic discovery, and through life he was linked to it by his growing doubts of its significance. Forty years later, when this complex novel begins, Middleton had become a Professor Emeritus and written a standard work on Cnut. But despite his distinction his colleagues felt that he had not fulfilled his promise. Their low opinion was shared by Gerald, who had allowed himself to marry the sentimental Danish beauty Inge. Their marriage was based on pretence, but Gerald found himself unable to end it, as he found himself incapable of exposing the farce of the Melpham tomb. For the children, too, the results were disastrous, as the author shows in a glittering series of portraits of all... Tovább

Fülszöveg

PENGUIN BOOKS
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
At Melpham in Suffolk the tomb of the great seventh-century missionary Eorpwald was excavated in 1912 by Professor Stokesay and found to contain a pagan figure of a gross and most unchristian form. As a young man, Gerald Middleton was near the scene of this dramatic discovery, and through life he was linked to it by his growing doubts of its significance. Forty years later, when this complex novel begins, Middleton had become a Professor Emeritus and written a standard work on Cnut. But despite his distinction his colleagues felt that he had not fulfilled his promise. Their low opinion was shared by Gerald, who had allowed himself to marry the sentimental Danish beauty Inge. Their marriage was based on pretence, but Gerald found himself unable to end it, as he found himself incapable of exposing the farce of the Melpham tomb. For the children, too, the results were disastrous, as the author shows in a glittering series of portraits of all three, their wives, their husbands, and their lovers.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes puts Angus Wilson among the masters of the modern novel. It has a richness of texture and a wealth of characters which recall the great Victorian realists. It tells a story of defeat, with penetrating irony and a compassion which cannot be ignored. In Gerald Middleton the author has created a tragic hero, and in his colleagues a witty, human, and remarkable group of historians.
'Mr Angus Wilson's brilliant and ambitious new novel is about the conscience as it worries two generations of a middle-class family And here lies the great originality of Mr Wifson as a novelist and the richness of his book. Its moral seriousness is matched by the comic explosions of our tradition' -V. S. Pritchett in the New Statesman Vissza