Growing Wings to Overcome Gravity : Criticism As the Pursuit of Virtue
"Growing Wings to Overcome Gravity, inspired by a passage from Plato's Phaedrus, serves as a coda to my critical trilogy, published over a span of nearly twenty years: The Reverent Discipline (1974), The courage of Judgement (1982), and The Critic as Conservator (1992). My title here provides the encompassing poetic image-and the inspiration behind my critical intent- of ultimately overcoming the crises of modernism in which we agonize, and of attaining the promise of spiritual and moral order.