Reach without Grasping

Reach without Grasping examines the robust engagement with classical Greek and Roman literatures, themes, and genres in the works of Anne Carson, who explores as many and as diverse a range of genre choices as the classical authors from whom she has drawn so richly throughout her enormously creative body of work.

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Anne Carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary classicists, poets, and translators in the English language. In Reach without Grasping, Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. explores the role played by generic transgressions on the one hand, and by embodied spirituality on the other, throughout Carson’s ambitious literary career. Where others see classical dichotomies (soul versus body, classical versus Christian), Carson sees connection. Like Nietzsche before her, Carson decries the images of the Classics as merely bookish and of classicists as disembodied intellects. She has brought religious, bodily erotics back into the heart of the classical tradition.