Poetic Gesture: Myth, Wallace Stevens, and the Desirous Motions of Poetic Language

by Santilli,Kristine S.

• ISBN13: 9780415938686
• ISBN10: 0415938686
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This study addresses the problem of meaning as it is conveyed by poetic language, attempting to move beyond some of the obstacles and boundaries of contemporary critical approaches. By providing a phenomenological context, and through a theoretical contemplation of certain myths as embodiments of the tacit 'logic' of poetry, the book argues that poems convey meaning much the way that spontaneous unreadable gestures do. Moving between theory and practice, and drawing upon the poetry of Wallace Stevens whose work is embedded with a richness and complexity of gesture, the author shows how the poetic text sustains and embodies an inconvertible, ancient and innately human form of linguistic knowledge.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xi
Can Beauty Hold a Plea? Toward a Theory of Poetic Gesture	1	(20)
Two Meditations	21	(32)
The Necessary Angel A Literal Body in a House of Words	53	(28)
The Latent Double in the Word Metonymy, Synecdoche, and the Gesture of Speech	81	(26)
Whose Spirit is This? The Touch of Thetis and the Poem's Gestural Context of Responsibility	107	(42)
Notes	149	(2)
Works Cited	151	(4)
Index	155