Sensory imagery and aesthetic affect in the poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot

294 Pages·2017·1.1 MB·English

by  Clare Louis Gerlach

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
2009
Sensory imagery and aesthetic affect in the poetry
of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot
Clare Louis Gerlach
University of Nevada Las Vegas
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SENSORY IMAGERY AND AESTHETIC AFFECT IN THE POETRY OF
KEATS, HOPKINS, AND ELIOT

by

Clare Louis Gerlach

Bachelor of Arts
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
2001

Master of Arts
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
2003

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

Graduate College
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
December 2009
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE

We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by

Clare Louis Gerlach

entitled

Sensory Imagery and Aesthetic Affect in the Poetry of Keats, Hopkins,
and Eliot

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
English

V. Nicholas LoLordo, Committee Chair

Megan Becker-Leckrone, Committee Member

Denise Tillery, Committee Member

Vernon Hodge, Graduate Faculty Representative

Ronald Smith, Ph. D., Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
and Dean of the Graduate College

December 2009

ii
ABSTRACT

Sensory Imagery and Aesthetic Affect in the Poetry of
Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot

by

Clare Louis Gerlach

Dr. V. Nicholas LoLordo, Examination Committee Chair
Assistant Professor of English
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This dissertation focuses on applying a new method of analyis to selected works by
three major poets, John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot. The project
considers their work in light of recent scholarship by Charles Altieri on the affects, such
as emotion, feelings, passion, and mood; how these affects operate in artistic works; and,
specifically, examines how these authors employ the affects in their poetry to express
their own emotions and, in the creation of lyric poems, turn these emotions into works of
art. In addition, the project strengthens the aesthetic readings with a study of the ways in
which these poets employ sensory images to achieve a desired affect. Through sensory
imagery, the poet avoids direct representation of affect in his poetry, thus making the
work subtler and nuances. By merging a reading for affects with a reading for sensory
imagery and sensations, I am able to describe the dominant affective modes of example
poems, and to elucidate the poetic language of the senses achieves that affect.
The introduction presents the concepts of the various affects, as explained by literary
critic, Charles Altieri. It argues that this framework of the affects can be valuable in
poetic analysis, and is expandable to include other affects, and subcategories of the
affects, as close reading of the poetry identifies new emotional vistas. I begin with the
poetry and critical writing (mainly letters) of John Keats, whose philosophy of poetry was
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a harbinger of later writers including Eliot. Like Keats, Eliot will accentuate the
detachment of the poet, and the difference between feelings and emotions. Like Keats,
Hopkins will express a type of detachment – his, slightly different, as it is a separation
from the worldly and an escape to the supernatural. Like Hopkins, Eliot will present
poetry that is deeply religious, but will add an element of political comment not present
in the earlier writers. By selecting poets from the three major literary periods of the long
nineteenth century, I provide ample spectrum for the demonstration of my method.
Chapters on Gerard Manley Hopkins and T. S. Eliot follow the chapter on Keats, and
in them I apply the methodology of sensory imagery and affect to poets of differing
backgrounds. Each chapter will include a philosophical analysis followed by close
reading of selected works. In Keats, I will locate a tension between the key concepts of
fancy and imagination, remarking on Keats’s separation from the wisdom of his
contemporary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on these interpretations of the two major
processes of poetic creativity. The Keats works analyzed include “Sleep and Poetry,”
Endymion, and “Ode to a Nightingale.” In explicating the works of Gerard Manley
Hopkins, I will establish how his conversion to Catholicism, and subsequent ordination as
a Jesuit, affected his poetic style, in turn creating for him a new affective space, which I
call religious fervor. The Hopkins poetry analyzed includes “God’s Grandeur,” “The
Windhover,” and “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves.” I will argue that, even in the so-called
“desolate sonnets” of 1885, Hopkins remained a poet of religious fervor, not doubt.
Reference will be made to J. Hillis Miller’s synoptic survey of the place of religion in
nineteenth century artistic works, The Disappearance of God. The poetry of T. S. Eliot
will be analyzed in an in-depth consideration of the very late poem, “Little Gidding,” the
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final of the Four Quartets. The dominant affect of that poem, composed during the
Second World War, is mood, the least subjective and the most passive of the affects, as
adumbrated by Altieri. The passivity of “Little Gidding” is the key to understanding the
affective plight of noncombatants in World War II; it is also the key to the poem’s
success.
In all of the chapters, attention will be given to the use of sensory imagery. This
work began as an interest in synaesthesia, especially in the work of Keats, but has been
expanded to include the perspective of recent scholarship by Susan Stewart (Poetry and
the Fate of the Senses), and Rei Terada (Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of
the Subject”). The interaction between the way sensory perception is presented and the
affective stance of the poetry varies from poet to poet. Keats, for example, often uses a
negation of the senses to establish emotional distance, yet stresses the intensity of natural
and artistic feelings. Hopkins, reflecting the religious practice of the Jesuits set forth by
St. Ignatius Loyola, often sacrifices the senses as worldly and seeks a loftier supernatural
affective stance in “The Habit of Perfection,” in which each of the senses is subjugated to
only spiritual, not sensory, input. Eliot, while seemingly focused on a specific place
(Little Gidding, a historical religious enclave from the seventeenth century), and time
(World War II), employs vague images which give the poem a moodlike affect, one
easily relevant to other places and other times. Eliot’s emphasis of the helplessness of the
plight of England in World War II adds a political perspective to an otherwise deeply
reflective and philosophical poem.
My conclusion highlights the ways in which these poets each construct a complex of
thoughts and affects to successfully express truths that were relevant at the time of
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writing, and add to the historical writing available to the next generation. Their
successful employment of sensory imagery makes their work suitable for analysis via the
aesthetics of the affects. Reading for sensory imagery and sensation combined with
reading for the affects is a powerful new way of interpreting poetry, and one which
should prove helpful in explication poetry of other poets and other eras as well.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Dr. V. Nicholas LoLordo, for his ideas,
patience, and interest, and especially for guiding me to the work of Charles Altieri, which
has been fundamental to my work here. Thanks also to committee members, Dr. Megan
Becker-Leckrone, Dr. Denise Tillery, Dr. Vernon Hodge, and Dr. Kathy Robins, for their
reading of, and comments on, this dissertation. Thanks to my friend and colleague, Dr.
Heather Lusty, who provided technical support. Finally, thanks to my husband, Dr.
Robert Gerlach, whose intellectual and emotional support made this effort enjoyable in
my personal, as well as professional, life.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….....vii
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
Demonstration of Reading for Affect ......................................................................... 12

CHAPTER 1 KEATS: FANCY, FEELINGS, AND IMAGINATION ........................... 29
“Sleep and Poetry” ...................................................................................................... 44
Endymion .................................................................................................................... 56
“Ode to a Nightingale”................................................................................................ 78

CHAPTER 2 HOPKINS: BEING AND RELIGIOUS AFFECT .................................. 104
Hopkins Criticism ..................................................................................................... 107
Inscape and Instress .................................................................................................. 118
“God’s Grandeur” ..................................................................................................... 129
“The Windhover” ...................................................................................................... 145
“Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves” ..................................................................................... 154
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 172

CHAPTER 3 ELIOT: THE AFFECTIVE STANCE OF “FOUR QUARTETS” .......... 177
The Affects................................................................................................................ 182
Eliot’s Critical Writings on Voice and Audience ..................................................... 190
Mood, Mandarins, and Social Context ..................................................................... 199
The Deployment of Mood ......................................................................................... 208
“Four Quartets” and the Attitude towards Action..................................................... 217
“Little Gidding” ........................................................................................................ 223
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 251

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 255
Deployment of the Affects ........................................................................................ 261
Summary ................................................................................................................... 271

WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 273
VITA ............................................................................................................................... 285

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INTRODUCTION

In this study of three major English poets, I will analyze their exploitation of affective
modes and sensory imagery to evoke a certain response in readers. Affective imagery is
that category of artistic effort which expresses emotions, feelings, moods, and passions.
There are subcategories of affects, too, such as anxiety (a type of mood), and fear (a type
of passion or feeling, depending on specific elements). The expression of affects in art
relies on the coherence of the artist’s experience with those of his audience. Sensory
imagery and the description of sensations are used to make the affective statement or
representation relevant to viewers and readers dislocated in time and space.
The three poets I have chosen to study are John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and
T. S. Eliot. I chose these three poets because they are iconic representatives of the
Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods, respectively. Their work seems to span the
spectrum of imagery from lushness to scientific precision to intellectual abstraction. They
were chosen for this study because their poetic methods, all revolutionary in a way,
illustrate a spectrum of how poets exploit sense and sensation to achieve affective results.
Keats is important also for his elevation of the fancy through lush descriptions of nature
which are more expressions of sensation than of basic sensory perceptions. Hopkins is
interesting for his innovative word choice and surprising juxtapositions to express deep
religious convictions as well as anxiety about death. Eliot is significant for his level of
removal from overt sensory images by the use of echoes, reflections, and ghosts.
These poets vary greatly biographically. In his lifetime, Keats was descried as a
“cockney poet” by Blackwoods, and his fame was only achieved after his death. Hopkins
who described himself as “time’s eunuch,” was unhappy and unrealized in his poetic
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