G. Wilson Knight

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For other persons of the same name, see George Knight.

George Richard Wilson Knight (1897-1985) was an English literary critic and academic, known particularly for his interpretation of mythic content in literature, and his essays The Wheel of Fire on Shakespeare's drama. He was also an actor and theatrical director, and considered an outstanding lecturer.

He was educated at Dulwich College, and after serving as a dispatch rider in World War I, at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He went into teaching; his first academic post was at Trinity College, Toronto in 1931. He taught at Stowe School from 1941 to 1946 and then was Reader in English Literature at Leeds University, where he became a professor in 1956.

The classical scholar William Francis Jackson Knight (1895-1964), of whom he wrote a biography, was his brother.

[edit] Works

  • Myth and Miracle: an Essay on the Mystic Symbolism of Shakespeare (1929)
  • The Wheel of Fire, Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy (1930)
  • The Imperial Theme (1931)
  • The Shakespearian Tempest (1932)
  • The Christian Renaissance, with interpretations of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, and a note on T. S. Eliot (1933)
  • Shakespeare and Tolstoy (1934)
  • Principles of Shakespeare's Production (1936)
  • Atlantic Crossing: an Autobiographical Design (1936)
  • The Burning Oracle, Studies in the Poetry of Action (1939)
  • The Sceptred Isle: Shakespeare's Message for England at War (1940)
  • The Starlit Dome: studies in the Poetry of Vision (1941)
  • Chariot of Wrath: the Message of John Milton to Democracy at War (1942)
  • The Olive and the Sword: a Study of England's Shakespeare (1944)
  • The Dynasty of Stowe (1945)
  • Hiroshima, on Prophecy and the sun-bomb (1946)
  • The Crown of Life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Final Plays (1946)
  • Christ and Nietzsche: an Essay in Poetic Wisdom (1948)
  • The Imperial Theme: Further Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tragedies, including the Roman Plays (1951)
  • Lord Byron: Christian Virtues (1952)
  • Byron's Dramatic Prose (1953)
  • The Last of the Incas, a Play on the Conquest of Peru (1954)
  • Laureate of Peace: on the Genius of Alexander Pope (1954)
  • The Mutual Flame: on Shakespeare's Sonnets and The Phoenix and the Turtle (1955)
  • Lord Byron's Marriage: The Evidence of Asterisks (1957)
  • The Sovereign Flower: on Shakespeare as the poet of Royalism (1958)
  • Ibsen (1962)
  • The Golden Labyrinth: a Study of British Drama (1962)
  • Byron and Hamlet (1962)
  • The Saturnian Quest: a Chart of the Prose Works of John Cowper Powys (1964)
  • Byron and Shakespeare (1966)
  • Gold-Dust, with Other Poetry (1968)
  • Shakespeare and Religion: Essays of Forty Years
  • Neglected Powers: Essays on 19th and 20th Century Literature (1971)
  • Jackson Knight: a Biography (1975)
  • Virgil and Shakespeare (1977)
  • Shakespeare's Dramatic Challenge: on the Rise of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (1977)
  • Symbol of Man: on Body-soul for Stage and Studio (1979)
  • Shakespearian Dimensions (1984)
  • Visions and Vices: Essays on John Cowper Powys (1989)
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