Edwin Muir Critical Essay | Critical Essay by J. R. Watson

Critical Essay by J. R. Watson

SOURCE: "Edwin Muir and the Problem of Evil," in The Critical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3, Autumn, 1964, pp. 231-49.

In the following essay, Watson identifies in Muir's poetry such central themes as the journey, the passage of time, and the randomness of evil.

In an essay on Henryson in Essays on Literature and Society, Edwin Muir quotes the epitaph from The Testament of Cresseid:

Lo, fair Ladyis, Crisseid, of Troyis toun, Sumtyme countit the flour of Womanheid, Under this stane lait Lipper lyis deid.

'No other Scottish poet,' says Muir, 'has risen to this high and measured style, and Henryson himself does not attain it often, though he does as often as the subject requires it. Yet it is a style which one would have expected to suit the Scottish genius, with its seriousness and its love of compressed utterance.' These Scottish qualities may be detected in Muir's...
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