Wallace Stevens and the limits of reading and writing / Bart Eeckhout.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eeckhout, Bart, 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955--Criticism and interpretation.

Stevens, Wallace.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Often considered America's greatest twentieth-century poet, Wallace Stevens is without a doubt the Anglo-modernist poet whose work has been most scrutinized from a philosophical perspective. Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing both synthesizes and extends the critical understanding of Stevens's poetry in this respect. Arguing that a concern with the establishment and transgression of limits goes to the heart of this poet's work, Bart Eeckhout traces both the limits of Stevens's poetry and the limits of writing as they are explored by that poetry. Stevens's work has been interpreted so variously and contradictorily that critics must first address the question of limits to the poetry's signifying potential before they can attempt to deepen our appreciation of it. In the first half of this book, the limits of appropriating and contextualizing Stevens's "The Snow Man," in particular, are investigated. Eeckhout does not undertake this reading with the negative purpose of disputing earlier interpretations but with the more positive intention of identifying the intrinsic qualities of the poetry that have been responsible for the remarkable amount of critical attention it has received.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction An Impossible Possible Philosophers Poetry

Chapter 1Reading Stevens

Chapter 2 It Must Resist the Intelligence Almost Successfully

Chapter 3 It Must Be Served like Sukiyaki

Chapter 4 It Must Be Intertextualized

Chapter 5 It Must Be Made of Snow

Chapter 6 Triangulating Pleasure, Doubt, and Irritation

Chapter 7 Infuriating Philosophers

Chapter 8 Between Matter and Mind

Chapter 9 Between the Senses of Sense

Chapter 10 Between Mimesis and Music

Chapter 11 Between Metaphor and X

Chapter 12 Poeticizing Epistemology

Works Cited

Index

Permissions.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-293) and index.

ISBN:

0-8262-6269-4

OCLC:

55663989