Wallace Stevens and the aesthetics of abstraction
By: Edward Ragg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521190862
Description: "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'"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction: 'Stevensian' and the question of abstraction 1935-2009; 1. The abstract impulse: from anecdote to 'new romantic' in Harmonium (1923) and Ideas of Order (1935); 2. The turn to abstraction: Owl's Clover (1936) and the 'un-locatable' speaker in The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937); 3. The 'in-visible' abstract: Stevens' idealism from Coleridge to Merleau-Ponty; 4. Abstract figures: the curious case of the idealist 'I'; 5. Abstract appetites: food, wine and the idealist 'I'; 6. The pure good of theory: a new abstract emphasis; 7. Bourgeois abstraction: poetry, painting and the idea of mastery in late Stevens.