World Enough and Time Summary
Robert Penn Warren

World Enough and Time Summary

World Enough and Time is subtitled "A Romantic Novel," but this description is in part ironic. The novel recreates a famous tragic series of events from the early history of Kentucky, a story that has been called, appropriately enough, "The Kentucky Tragedy." Its resolution is tragic indeed, for the novel traces the degradation and death of its hero in its final half. However, World Enough and Time, whose title is taken from Andrew Marveil's poem, "To His Coy Mistress To Make Much of Time," describes the lives of two very passionate lovers, whose blend of romantic idealism and passion bring them to destruction: hence, the novel may be called aptly a "romantic novel," because its protagonists embody the spirit of romanticism.

Warren's epigraph for the novel is taken from a description of Edmund Spenser's knight Artegall, the hero of Book V of The Faerie...

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