Unfather

But this delugic force is not truly akin to those unfathers until Wordsworth recovers from total loss and, in a moment of specular identification, recognizes in that errant power the face of his own soul: "And now recovering, to my Soul I say/'I recognise thy glory'"

With the increasing numbers of unfathers and unmothers, churches need ceremonies that aid acceptance, thank medical professionals for valiant attempts, promote courage to face a childless future and remind them of the omnipresence of the Therapeutic Presence.

Instead of three fathers rooting for me when I made my processional entrance into the football stadium and onto an immense green field to collect my empty diploma case, there was Rudy, an unfather, somewhere in a blurry sea of cardinal red

A son no son, unfathers me. Earth, sky and deep, rise, come, be father for me: ascend before him into the day, to cover him from all his light, and your annihilation fall on him!

More strongly still: "Visitation unfathers men. This phenomenon gradually strangles the father-child relationship."

Some of these feelings, in all their confusion, press into the flamboyant statement with which he unfathers Cordelia at 1.1.116: The barbarous Scythian Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter.

Yet how is the unfathering related to usurpation? Is the situation as Oedipal as its rhetoric suggests? Oedipus encounters and kills a traveler on the road outside Thebes, and by doing so unfathers himself.

Wendell's mother unfathers him twice-over (through dislike of her first husband) by giving him her maiden name and claiming his conception was immaculate (R, 20, 46-47).