Myth, Wallace Stevens, and the desirous motions of poetic language PDF
Preview Myth, Wallace Stevens, and the desirous motions of poetic language
LITERARY CRITICISM AND CULTURAL THEORY OUTSTANDING DISSERTATION S edited by William E. Cain Wellesley College A ROUTLEDGE SERIES OTHER BoOKS IN THIS SERIES: DISSENTING FICTIONS ALLEGORIES OF VIOLENCE Identity and Resistance in the Tracing the Writings of War in Late Contemporary American Novel Twentieth-Century Fiction Cathy Moses Lidia Yuknavitch PERFORMING LA MESTZA VOICE OF THE OPPRESSED IN THE LANGUAGE Textual References of Lesbians of Color OF THE OPPRESSOR and the Negotiation of Identities A Discussion of Selected Postcolonial Ellen M. Gil-Gomez Literature from Ireland. Africa and America FROM GOOD MA TO WELFARE QUEEN Patsy 1. Daniels A Genealogy of the Poor Woman in American Literature. Photography and EUGENIC FANTASIES Culture Racial Ideology in the Literature and Vivyan C. Adair Popular Culture of the 1920's Betsy L. Nies ARTFUL ITINERARIES European Art and American Careers in THE LIFE WRITING OF OTHERNESS High Culture. 1865-1920 Woolf. Baldwin. Kingston. and Winterson Paul Fisher Lauren Rusk POSTMODERN TALES OF SLAVERY FROM WITHIN THE FRAME IN THE AMERICAS Storytelling in African-American Fiction From Alejo Carpenter to Charles Johnson Bertram D. Ashe Timothy J. Cox THE SELF WIRED EMBODYING BEAUTY Technology and Subjectivity in Twentieth-Century American Women Contemporary Narrative Writers' Aesthetics Lisa Yaszek Malin Pereira THE SPACE AND PLACE OF MODERNISM MAKING HOMES IN THE WEST/INDIES The Little Magazine in New York Constructions of Subjectivity in the Adam McKible Writings of Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid THE FIGURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Antonia Macdonald-Smythe William James. Henry James. and Edith Wharton POSTCOLONIAL MASQUERADES Jill M. Kress Culture and Politics in Literature. Film. Video. and Photography WORD OF MOUTH Niki Sampat Patel Food and Fiction after Freud Susanne Skubal DIALECTIC OF SELF AND STORY Reading and Storytelling in Contemporary THE WASTE FIX American Fiction Seizures of the Sacred from Upton Sinclair Robert Durante to The Soprano's William G. Little POETIC GESTURE Myth, Wallace Stevens, and the Motions of Poetic Language Kristine S. Santilli ~ 1 Routledge ! ~ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2002 by Routledge Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXI4 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint oft he Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2002 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. Poems by Wallace Stevens from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke from THE SELECTED POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE by Rainer Maria Rilke a, translated by Stephen Mitchell, © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. "The Face of Sorrow" by Goran Simic is used by permission of Goran Simic. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Santilli, Kristine S., 1948~ Poetic gesture: myth, Wallace Stevens, and the motions of poetic language/by Kristine S. Santilli. p. cm.-(Literary criticism and cultural theory) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. I. Stevens, Wallace, 1879~ 1955- Criticism and interpretation. 2. Gesture in literature. 3. Myth in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PS3537.T4753 z7645 2002 811'.52-dc21 2002004221 ISBN 13: 978-0-415-93868-6 (hbk) To Paul and Tom Santilli for their patience and love and to Helen Requiero Elam and Sandra K. Ellston To speak quietly at such a distance, to speak And to be heard is to be large in space. Wallace Stevens "Chocorua to its Neighbor" This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknow ledgments ix Preface xi Chapter One: Can Beauty Hold a Plea? Toward a Theory of Poetic Gesture 1 Chapter Two: Two Meditations 21 Chapter Three: The Necessary Angel A Literal Body in a House of Words 53 Chapter Four: The Latent Double in the Word Metonymy, Synecdoche, and the Gesture of Speech 81 Chapter Five: Whose Spirit is This? The Touch of Thetis and the Poem's Gestural Context of Responsibility 107 Notes 149 Works Cited 151 Index 155 vii This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments ! wOUld like to express my gratitude to those who have had a hand in the writing of this book by virtue of their support, guidance and friendship. First of all, I would like to thank The Sage Colleges and in particular Dr. Sally Lawrence for a semester's leave in the spring of 1996 to complete this project. Many thanks as well to Mark S. Fusco and his staff in the Center for College Services for their support and promptness, to Sheldon Wein and Agnes Stillman, Sage librarians, and to Nancy Cumo, our depart ment secretary. I would like to acknowledge my editors at Routledge, Damian Treffs and Erin Herlihy, for their guidance, for their careful atten tion to the details of publication, and for their flexibility. In addition, during the period of writing this book, the colleagues with whom I worked most closely provided support in numerous ways, gener ously making allowances for me and never acknowledging the increased burden to themselves due to my preoccupation with writing and research. I am greatly indebted to them for the context of kindness, encouragement and friendship within which I wrote this book. They are Olivia Bertagnolli, Doreen J. Tiernan, Judy A. Waterman, and Jeffrey K. Soleau. Without them, I surely would never have been able to complete the project. In this respect, I must also thank my dear friend Patricia H. Burkey, whose many astute observations and questions often helped to clarify the beginnings of an idea into more focused insight. I would also like to thank my teachers, old and new: Sr. Lucille Thibodeau for introducing into my life many years ago the deeper pleasures of the sound of poetry; Dr. Donna M. Perry for her initial encouragement to continue toward the Ph.D. and for her enduring and dear friendship these many years; my good friend and teacher, Dr. Sandra K. Ellston, whose relentless questioning and meticulous editorial and scholarly advice provid ed a context of rigor for which I am very grateful, and whose sense of humor carries me along still. And I would like to acknowledge my enormous debt ix
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