Includes bibliographical references.

Theoretical; the tragic vision and the classic vision -- Historical; The drab vision of earthly love -- The retreat from extremity through the worship of bloodless abstraction -- Eloisa to Abelard; the escape from body or the embrace of body -- The cosmetic cosmos of The Rape of the Lock -- Samuel Johnson; The extensive view of mankind and the cost of acceptance -- The retreat from extremity through the embrace of the natural human community -- William Wordsworth and the Felix Culpa -- Adam Bede and the cushioned fall; the extenuation of extremity -- Postscript; the naive classic and the merely comic -- The retreat from extremity through the acceptance of the human barnyard-- The human inadequacy of Gulliver, Strephon, and Walter Shandy-and the barnyard alternative -- The assumption of the burden of history in All the King's Men -- The retreat from the extremity through an alternative to Sainthood -- The light-ening of the burden of history; Light in August -- Murder in the Cathedral; the limits of drama and the freedom of vision.

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