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"The angel at the centre of this rind" and Stevens behind subject and object
Title
"The angel at the centre of this rind" and Stevens behind subject and object.
Creator
Martin, Thomas L., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
Wallace Stevens's poem "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together" contains his most complete figure on the workings of the self's noetic cosmos, the figure being a system of three planets, which accounts for the development of reason from its first stages all the way to its highest in art. This figure provides unusual insight into the most prominent theoretical issues in his poetry: the relationship between reality, reason, and art; and the relationship between subjectivity, intentionality, and...
Show moreWallace Stevens's poem "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together" contains his most complete figure on the workings of the self's noetic cosmos, the figure being a system of three planets, which accounts for the development of reason from its first stages all the way to its highest in art. This figure provides unusual insight into the most prominent theoretical issues in his poetry: the relationship between reality, reason, and art; and the relationship between subjectivity, intentionality, and externality.
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Date Issued
1989
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14500
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
Concept of Deity in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
Title
Concept of Deity in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens.
Creator
Lawson, Jeanette Dee, Pearce, Howard D., Florida Atlantic University
Abstract/Description
Wallace Stevens sought to remove the false image of God in order to find truth and reality. His various attempts to dispel the myth of religion can be traced through his poetry and correspondence. His poetry can be divided into five phases, each illustrating Stevens's changing attitude toward God. In phase I Stevens employed simple substitution, replacing the image of the supreme with common objects. In phase II he looked for ''the god within man" while increasing his efforts to remove the...
Show moreWallace Stevens sought to remove the false image of God in order to find truth and reality. His various attempts to dispel the myth of religion can be traced through his poetry and correspondence. His poetry can be divided into five phases, each illustrating Stevens's changing attitude toward God. In phase I Stevens employed simple substitution, replacing the image of the supreme with common objects. In phase II he looked for ''the god within man" while increasing his efforts to remove the illusion of God. Phase III was one of transition, where Stevens rejected former theories and sought a new direction to follow. In phase IV he concentrated on exposing the myths and defining reality. At the end of this phase, he reviewed his progress and found himself no nearer to his goal. Stevens lacked focus in phase V due to this disappointment; he died before settling on a new theory.
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Date Issued
1992
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000932
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
What will suffice? The process of creating a supreme fiction: Color, sound, and motion imagery in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
Title
What will suffice? The process of creating a supreme fiction: Color, sound, and motion imagery in the poetry of Wallace Stevens.
Creator
Springman, Carolyn Poole., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
The poetry of Wallace Stevens demonstrates a process of creativity through motion, color, and sound imagery. This process is one of creating or discovering a supreme fiction or a temporal ideal or order that will suffice for now but will continue in motion and change. A momentary blending of the imagination and reality creates this ideal poetry. Chaos, disorder, death, and decay are metaphors for the activity of decreation, which must precede creation in many poems. Nature constantly changes,...
Show moreThe poetry of Wallace Stevens demonstrates a process of creativity through motion, color, and sound imagery. This process is one of creating or discovering a supreme fiction or a temporal ideal or order that will suffice for now but will continue in motion and change. A momentary blending of the imagination and reality creates this ideal poetry. Chaos, disorder, death, and decay are metaphors for the activity of decreation, which must precede creation in many poems. Nature constantly changes, but it does so with a pattern. The patterned motion in the poetry is a circular motion toward a center of form, balance, and perfection. Color imagery demonstrates a process much like the one that Newton demonstrated in the colors that make up light. Sound imagery evokes "inherited Memory" which we use to recreate a new fiction.
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Date Issued
1991
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14769
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
WALLACE STEVENS: "AN ORDINARY EVENING IN NEW HAVEN."
Title
WALLACE STEVENS: "AN ORDINARY EVENING IN NEW HAVEN.".
Creator
MORAN, JUDITH V., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
Two themes are evident in the late poem by Wallace Stevens, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven." The first theme reiterates Stevens' aesthetic that the subject matter for poetry is derived from ever-changing external reality. The second theme is that in poetry there is an existential unity between language, reality and Being, an idea which is similar to the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger. Despite an apparent lack of logical coherence, these themes unify the poem's thirty-one sections and...
Show moreTwo themes are evident in the late poem by Wallace Stevens, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven." The first theme reiterates Stevens' aesthetic that the subject matter for poetry is derived from ever-changing external reality. The second theme is that in poetry there is an existential unity between language, reality and Being, an idea which is similar to the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger. Despite an apparent lack of logical coherence, these themes unify the poem's thirty-one sections and demonstrate the new form of modern poetry which interprets the purpose and function of language itself.
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Date Issued
1977
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13873
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation.
Format
Document (PDF)
GABRIEL'S NEMESES: STEVENS'S ANGELS (WALLACE STEVENS, POETRY, PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH)
Title
GABRIEL'S NEMESES: STEVENS'S ANGELS (WALLACE STEVENS, POETRY, PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH).
Creator
ENDRUSCHAT, MARY ELIZABETH., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
The word "angel" derives from "messenger" and enters into the language from the Hebrew mal' ahyehowah "messenger of Jehovah." In Stevens's cosmos, the gods have come to nothing, and so he metamorphoses the western, metaphysical sense of "messenger of God," while maintaining its messenger topos. Stevens's decreation of angel is an exercise in the language about the language. Stevens's new messenger is the poet, like Heidegger's Da-Sein. Stevens's angel poetry is filled with images that are ...
Show moreThe word "angel" derives from "messenger" and enters into the language from the Hebrew mal' ahyehowah "messenger of Jehovah." In Stevens's cosmos, the gods have come to nothing, and so he metamorphoses the western, metaphysical sense of "messenger of God," while maintaining its messenger topos. Stevens's decreation of angel is an exercise in the language about the language. Stevens's new messenger is the poet, like Heidegger's Da-Sein. Stevens's angel poetry is filled with images that are "metagenetic," a characteristic that describes their metamorphic repetition. In the continuous repetition of the angel image, metaphor, and symbol, Stevens develops a poetic theory that differs from the phallologocentric beginnings of the traditional western metaphysical angel. Stevens supplants traditional poetic apotheosis with a transcendence/immanence defined as the aesthetic condition of fuller Being. Angels, destructured and restructured as a fiction, enable the poet and readers to refocus on the needs and aesthetics of contemporary perception.
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Date Issued
1986
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14303
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation.
Format
Document (PDF)
WALLACE STEVENS AND THE ESTHETICS OF WILLIAM HOGARTH
Title
WALLACE STEVENS AND THE ESTHETICS OF WILLIAM HOGARTH.
Creator
SURBAUGH, PHYLLIS WHITEHEAD., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
William Hogarth in The Analysis of Beauty, first published in 1753, names the pineapple as the almost perfect form. It combines the oval and the cone and, further, is ornamented to achieve a balance between variety and simplicity. Wallace Stevens, always concerned with forms and the metaphors they engender, uses the pineapple as subject of a major poem, "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together," and elsewhere in his work it appears as a forceful image. Hogarth recommends that the artist study his...
Show moreWilliam Hogarth in The Analysis of Beauty, first published in 1753, names the pineapple as the almost perfect form. It combines the oval and the cone and, further, is ornamented to achieve a balance between variety and simplicity. Wallace Stevens, always concerned with forms and the metaphors they engender, uses the pineapple as subject of a major poem, "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together," and elsewhere in his work it appears as a forceful image. Hogarth recommends that the artist study his subject from within the form, to achieve a fuller realization of its exterior, a technique often practiced by Stevens, whose thinking may proceed from the center of a given form--or idea--to the outside. Hogarth's stated belief that variety is essential to beauty finds confirmation in the poetry of Stevens, who is known for the diversity of his vision.
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Date Issued
1985
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14236
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Hogarth, William,--1697-1764--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
Encounters between mind and world in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens
Title
Encounters between mind and world in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens.
Creator
Sakal, Nancy., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
The interaction between mind (consciousness) and world (sensory phenomena) is explored in depth by poets William Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens, with particular attention given to the role of imagination. In The Prelude, Wordsworth describes events from his own early life, encounters between mind and world, leading to the development of a poetic sensibility. Stevens, writing in a playful, improvisational style very different from Wordsworth's, examines a variety of encounters between...
Show moreThe interaction between mind (consciousness) and world (sensory phenomena) is explored in depth by poets William Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens, with particular attention given to the role of imagination. In The Prelude, Wordsworth describes events from his own early life, encounters between mind and world, leading to the development of a poetic sensibility. Stevens, writing in a playful, improvisational style very different from Wordsworth's, examines a variety of encounters between characters such as Crispin in "The Comedian as the Letter C" and external reality. For both poets, the boundaries between mind and world are indeterminate, and the question of supremacy in their dynamic relationship is unresolved. Yet the sense of a "something" that grounds this interplay, what Stevens identifies as "Being," leads the ever-active imagination to do its work, at home in the world.
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Date Issued
1991
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14740
Subject Headings
Wordsworth, William,--1770-1850--Criticism and interpretation, Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
hand as creator in Wallace Stevens: Perception, sensation, and the phenomenal self
Title
The hand as creator in Wallace Stevens: Perception, sensation, and the phenomenal self.
Creator
Johnson, Jamie, Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
Wallace Stevens's poems alluding to hands yield one of his most profound topics of interest: reality (the external, natural world) versus the imagination (the internal mind). The human hand offers a unique perspective of the complex, often problematic worlds in which the artist exists. In terms of the external world, the hands are the most common means of sense experience. For many artists, the hands act as a medium through which expression of art is delivered. During inspiration, an artist...
Show moreWallace Stevens's poems alluding to hands yield one of his most profound topics of interest: reality (the external, natural world) versus the imagination (the internal mind). The human hand offers a unique perspective of the complex, often problematic worlds in which the artist exists. In terms of the external world, the hands are the most common means of sense experience. For many artists, the hands act as a medium through which expression of art is delivered. During inspiration, an artist therefore takes an experience of the world, filters it through the imagination, and then creates art by combining mind and sense experience. It is the complications involved in this process of creation that the forthcoming analysis explores. The philosophical insight of Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Husserl, and William James offers ways of interpreting the intricate creative process apparent in Stevens's poems. By visualizing the necessary altered state of perception through Stevens's language, one can then better understand the acquisition of the ideal state, or "phenomenal body."
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Date Issued
2002
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12916
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Perception (Philosophy) in literature, Self (Philosophy) in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
Wallace Stevens: Tale teller of the soul
Title
Wallace Stevens: Tale teller of the soul.
Creator
Frusciante, Denise Marie., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
In his work Re-Visioning Psychology, Jungian depth psychologist James Hillman defines the soul as "a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself"(xvi). This definition helps to show the existence of a nontraditional, but not anti-Christian, soul in the works of Wallace Stevens. From the swirling chaos of "The Pleasures of Merely Circulating" to the underworld liminal irreality displayed in "Yellow Afternoon," we find psyche flourishing in the...
Show moreIn his work Re-Visioning Psychology, Jungian depth psychologist James Hillman defines the soul as "a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself"(xvi). This definition helps to show the existence of a nontraditional, but not anti-Christian, soul in the works of Wallace Stevens. From the swirling chaos of "The Pleasures of Merely Circulating" to the underworld liminal irreality displayed in "Yellow Afternoon," we find psyche flourishing in the poetry of Stevens. She dwells in an underworld existence surrounded by archetypal Gods, such as Hermes, Hades, Dionysus, Priapus, and Zeus. While Stevens does not use the word "soul" in any of the poems to be discussed, Hillman's theories on psyche show us that we are not to literalize our souls. We must allow psyche to transport us into a metaphoric, interior realm where Stevens's worms, his poet figure, and his readers can transform into Gods.
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Date Issued
2000
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12715
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation., Soul in literature.
Format
Document (PDF)
naming man: A study of Wallace Stevens's poetry titles
Title
The naming man: A study of Wallace Stevens's poetry titles.
Creator
Weinschenk, George Godfrey, III., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
The titles of Wallace Stevens's poetry assist in an explication of the poems. Stevens's titling techniques force the reader into a complicit involvement with the text before the commitment to read is even made. By asserting a strong presence in his titles, Stevens is able to engage the reader in an exploration of what is possible for the imagination. He presents his poetry as a foil for the actualization of his audience. Potentials are experienced and made real by this active involvement with...
Show moreThe titles of Wallace Stevens's poetry assist in an explication of the poems. Stevens's titling techniques force the reader into a complicit involvement with the text before the commitment to read is even made. By asserting a strong presence in his titles, Stevens is able to engage the reader in an exploration of what is possible for the imagination. He presents his poetry as a foil for the actualization of his audience. Potentials are experienced and made real by this active involvement with the poems, which in turn permits them to reveal their hidden meanings. A recursive responsiveness to Stevens's titles during the enjoyment of his poems rewards the reader with some answers to Wallace Stevens's masterful mystery. His management of titles is a part of the syntactical expression that is central to a full experience of his poetry.
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Date Issued
1997
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15402
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Titles of poems, Poetics
Format
Document (PDF)
STEVENS AND ARISTOTLE: THE MIMETIC CONNECTION (MODERN)
Title
STEVENS AND ARISTOTLE: THE MIMETIC CONNECTION (MODERN).
Creator
NIGHTINGALE, BARBRA L., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
A detailed analysis of Wallace Stevens's poetics reveals close parallels with Aristotle's theory of mimesis. These parallels are most notable in regard to the definition of mimesis as it pertains to poetry, language, nature, reality, and imagination. An exploration of these parallels firmly establishes Stevens as an Aristotelian, and therefore provides an important aid in understanding his use of poetic devices such as diction, metaphor, and persona.
Date Issued
1985
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14268
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Aristotle--Aesthetics
Format
Document (PDF)
Conversations with the dead: The ontological substructure of Wallace Stevens' "Esthetique du Mal"
Title
Conversations with the dead: The ontological substructure of Wallace Stevens' "Esthetique du Mal".
Creator
Danylyshen, Darren Joseph., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
In "Esthetique du Mal," one of his later poems, Wallace Stevens considers existence from a variety of critical and philosophical perspectives, among them various moral, aesthetic, political, theological, and philosophic "epistemes" that condition how humanity perceives and experiences the world. These epistemological "modes" dictate how we live and perceive the world about us, providing preconceptions that shroud understanding and obfuscate ontological explanation. What Stevens accomplishes...
Show moreIn "Esthetique du Mal," one of his later poems, Wallace Stevens considers existence from a variety of critical and philosophical perspectives, among them various moral, aesthetic, political, theological, and philosophic "epistemes" that condition how humanity perceives and experiences the world. These epistemological "modes" dictate how we live and perceive the world about us, providing preconceptions that shroud understanding and obfuscate ontological explanation. What Stevens accomplishes in "Esthetique du Mal" is to create a dialogue with various historical and philosophical "schools," systematically confronting and rejecting their perspectives, and creating a movement toward Martin Heidegger's "aletheia" to uncover the ontological substructure that exists beneath the individual's experience in the world. This movement of "uncovering" and exposing the nature of what it means "to be in the world" is a journey to an ontological substructure that allows Stevens to arrive at a dynamic, ontological proof: that existence is full of "reverberating" possibilities, not solitary and "univocal" statements.
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Date Issued
1999
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15702
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Esthʹetique du mal, Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Ontology in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
significance of the space between: A consideration of liminality, meditation, and modernity in selected poems by Wallace Stevens and Charles Baudelaire
Title
The significance of the space between: A consideration of liminality, meditation, and modernity in selected poems by Wallace Stevens and Charles Baudelaire.
Creator
Wonn, Charles S., Florida Atlantic University, Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract/Description
The state of liminality, as defined by Mihai Spariosu and exemplified by Wallace Stevens and Charles Baudelaire, is a significant one, transitional in its "structure," and one in which a vital activity takes place. Namely, this activity is the moving between worlds, states, or perceptions, and the choice of new ones, or of considering new potentialities. Essentially, this idea of being in limbo and the result of this state of "in-betweenness" is that we emerge from a relatively indeterminate,...
Show moreThe state of liminality, as defined by Mihai Spariosu and exemplified by Wallace Stevens and Charles Baudelaire, is a significant one, transitional in its "structure," and one in which a vital activity takes place. Namely, this activity is the moving between worlds, states, or perceptions, and the choice of new ones, or of considering new potentialities. Essentially, this idea of being in limbo and the result of this state of "in-betweenness" is that we emerge from a relatively indeterminate, contemplative, and subjective space with an ultimate satisfaction or heightened or altered awareness. Much of Stevens's poetry, especially his later poetry, exemplifies a meditative contemplation of being, while Baudelaire's poetry portrays the liminally sublime, ghostly being in a transitional urban world. Both poets demonstrate such concepts of transition and ultimate coping in a modern state of flux.
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Date Issued
2002
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12957
Subject Headings
Stevens, Wallace,--1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation, Baudelaire, Charles,--1821-1867--Criticism and interpretation, Liminality in literature
Format
Document (PDF)