Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction

by Edward Ragg

• ISBN13: 9780521190862
• ISBN10: 052119086X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Edward Ragg's study re-considers the role of abstraction in the work of Wallace Stevens. By tracing the poet's interest in abstraction from Harmonium through to his later works, Ragg argues that Stevens only fully appreciated and refined this interest within his later career. Ragg's detailed close-readings highlight the poet's absorption of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century painting, as well as the examples of philosophers and other poets' work. Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction will appeal to those studying Stevens as well as anyone interested in the relations between poetry and painting. This valuable study embraces revealing philosophical and artistic perspectives, analyzing Stevens' place within and resistance to Modernist debates concerning literature, painting, representation and 'the imagination'.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
List of Abbreviations	p. x
Introduction: 'Stevensian' and the question of abstraction 1935-2009	p. 1
The abstract impulse: from anecdote to 'new romantic' in Harmonium (1923) and Ideas of Order (1935)	p. 30
The turn to abstraction: Owl's Clover (1936) and the 'un-locatable' speaker in The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937)	p. 55
The 'in-visible' abstract: Stevens' idealism from Coleridge to Merleau-Ponty	p. 78
Romantic adaptations: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Stevens	p. 78
Abstract analogues: Blanchot, Merleau-Ponty, Stevens	p. 88
The touch of Henri Focillon	p. 101
Coda: the New Criticism and abstraction	p. 107
Abstract figures: the curious case of the idealist 'I'	p. 110
Taming 'the guerrilla I': the early poems of Parts of a World (1942)	p. 110
From 'robust poet' to idealist 'I': 'The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words' (1942) and 'The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet' (1943)	p. 119
The human abstract in 'Landscape with Boat' (1940)	p. 129
Abstract appetites: food, wine and the idealist 'I'	p. 136
Tasting 'Certain Phenomena of Sound' (1942)	p. 136
Hartford Bourguignon: 'Montrachet-Le-Jardin' (1942) and Cymbeline	p. 143
The pure good of theory: a new abstract emphasis	p. 166
'Major man' revised: 'Paisant Chronicle' (1945) and 'Description Without Place' (1945)	p. 166
Writing 'beyond': 'Repetitions of a Young Captain' (1944) and 'Three Academic Pieces' (1947)	p. 174
Pragmatic abstraction v. metaphor: 'The Pure Good of Theory' (1945) and Macbeth	p. 185
Bourgeois abstraction: poetry, painting and the idea of mastery in late Stevens	p. 204
Mastery of life: at home with Wallace Stevens	p. 204
Conclusion	p. 228
Bibliography	p. 232
Index	p. 244
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