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Flame far too hot: William Empson's non-Euclidean predicament

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posted on 2023-08-30, 13:25 authored by Katy Price
William Empson’s poem ‘Letter I’ (1928–35) appears to anticipate the black hole, using the idea of a dying star from which no light escapes as a metaphor for unrequited passion. Closer inspection of the Cambridge undergraduate context in which the poem was written, along with the other source materials incorporated besides Arthur Eddington in the poem, reveals the motivation behind Empson’s playful engagement with the limits of what was possible under general relativity. Empson’s attempt to follow the metaphysical example of John Donne, using the new cosmology of the 1920s, led him to explore an extreme astro-physical condition that Eddington had dismissed as absurd, and that still had an uncertain scientific status in the 1930s.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

30

Issue number

4

Page range

312-322

Publication title

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

ISSN

1743-2790

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2010-09-08

Legacy creation date

2020-10-02

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences (until September 2018)

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