Sherwood Anderson's Theory of Art.

197 Pages·2017·7.92 MB·English

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1972
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Dillard Floyd Sebastian Jr
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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SEBASTIAN, Jr., Dillard Floyd, 1926-
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S THEORY OF ART.
The Louisiana State University and Agricultural
and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1972
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
© 1972
Dillard Floyd Sebastian, Jr.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S THEORY OF ART
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of English
by
Dillard Floyd Sebastian, Jr.
A.B., Stetson University, 1947
B.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1951
Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1952
M.A.T., University of Florida, 1962
May, 1972
PLEASE NOTE:
Some pages may have
indistinct print.
Filmed as received.
University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I am grateful to Dr. Lewis P. Simpson for his guidance
and encouragement in the preparation of this study and to
Dr. Thomas L. Watson, Dr. Otis B. Wheeler, Dr. James L.
Babin, and Dr. John H. Wildman for their valuable comments
and suggestions.
Further, I am indebted to Dr. Thomas A. Kirby, Head
of the Department of English, and to the Graduate School
for the Dissertation-Year Fellowship which permitted me to
devote my full attention to research and the completion of
this dissertation.
ii
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT............. . ............... ii
ABSTRACT .............................................. iv
Chapter Page
I. THE PROBLEM OF THE ARTIST IN A M E R I C A ........... 1
American Culture and the Puritan Spirit . . . . 1
The Impotence of the Artist in America . . . . 9
II. ART AND IMAGINATION.................................15
Two W o r l d s ........................................16
Two S e l v e s ........................................32
Imagination and the A r t i s t ...................... 37
III. AN AESTHETIC OF FEELING............................ 50
Love as Intuition................................. 51
Art as Intuition................................. 70
IV. STYLE AND F O R M .................................... 120
Style....................................... 120
F o r m ............................................. 135
V. THE ROLE OF THE A R T I S T ........................... 158
Anderson's Literary Development ............... 158
Agrarian Mysticism..............................162
The Artist in a Religious R o l e ...................166
The Artist and A m e r i c a .......................... 168
AFTERWORD..................................................175
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................. 182
V I T A ........................................................ 186
iii
ABSTRACT
Sherwood Anderson's philosophy is based on a panthe­
istic vitalism and corresponding intuitive "love of life”
which functions on two levels: as primitive rapport with the
rhythm and harmony of life processes and as humanitarian com­
passion. The Puritan heritage of materialism and industri­
alism, he believed, had suppressed the vitality of life in
America and had resulted in personal psychic distortion as
well as fragmentation and disorder in social experience. The
function of art is the restoration of instinct and emotion
in a civilization which subordinates human vitality to im­
personal structures of materialism.
Anderson's theory of art— he is concerned only with
American art— is focused in three basic concepts— life, love,
and beauty. He begins with the premise that aesthetic value
is dependent on vitalist value. Where vitality thrives An­
derson finds beauty: where it is suppressed (which is his
typical theme), he finds ugliness— but also an "odd" beauty
in the pathos of privation. The sense of beauty therefore
arises from appreciation of life, either as joy in vital ful­
fillment or poignant recognition of the unfulfilled potential
for life where it is inhibited, the latter resulting in the
muted tone of Anderson's grotesguerie.
V
For the writer, style is the approximation in language
of the vital expressiveness attained by the painter in the
color and texture of a canvas. In terms of style words have
a dual function: cognitively, they communicate the "essence"
of the subject as felt by the author; and, through their im­
pact as sensory objects, they endow prose with vitality and
surface beauty. Form is likewise defined in vitalist terms.
Objectively, form exists as the rhythm and symmetry of life
hidden beneath chaotic factual reality. Subjectively, it is
manifested, first, as the artist's intuition of order in ex­
perience and his simultaneous realization of the intuition
in a work of art where it organizes and manifests beauty and,
second, as the viewer's or reader's corresponding discovery
of life and beauty evoked in the artifact. Realized form is
an illumination of the coherence of a work of art, which
brings together artist, reader, and character (usually a
grotesque isolated and crippled by emotional privation) in a
shared intuition of the coherence of life. And the communion
thus established through sympathy for life constitutes a
start toward restoration of vital contacts and harmonious
order in social arrangements. The "purity" of feeling— i.e.,
fidelity to one's authentic reactions to life as it actually
is— required of the artist who evokes form in experience is,
Anderson believed, perhaps the only basis of moral value in
the meaninglessness of modern life.
Anderson conceived beauty in humanistic rather than
aesthetic terms— as a function of vitality. His humanitarian
vi
impulses also led him to a concept of the artist as "lover,”
whose sympathetic imagination can transform human frustration
and express it as beauty. At every point aesthetic value is
authenticated by human value. Hence the moral significance
of aesthetic form, which is inseparable from form in human
arrangements. Only that art which comprehends life in its
disorder and crudity can be pure and moral, Anderson argues,
and likewise only a value system which recognizes the crudity
of life and does not gloss it over in the interest of false
idealism can have moral validity. Hence also Anderson's re­
ligious definition of the role of the artist who, because his
materials are human lives and his objective the salvation of
men, is seen as a priest and a prophet of personal and nation­
al renewal. The artist seeks nothing less than the regenera­
tion and reordering of American life.