With poetry and philosophy : four dialogic studies : Wordsworth, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy

129 Pages·2007·1.058 MB·English

by  Miller, David

With Poetry and Philosophy

With Poetry and Philosophy
Four Dialogic Studies—Wordsworth, Browning,
Hopkins and Hardy

By

David Miller

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING
With Poetry and Philosophy: Four Dialogic Studies—Wordsworth, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy,
by David Miller

This book first published 2007 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2007 by David Miller

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 1-84718-250-X; ISBN 13: 9781847182500
For Lucia…as if now was no more too soon.
Airs and forms dying…a choir to calm impotence and absence!
—Rimbaud, Youth III
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface..................................................................................................................viii

Introduction..............................................................................................................1

Chapter One...........................................................................................................20
Wordsworth and Kant and the Prosaic Sublime

Chapter Two...........................................................................................................39
Fitting Infinities: Browning and Hegel

Chapter Three.........................................................................................................66
Utter Limits: Hopkins and Kierkegaard

Chapter Four..........................................................................................................85
The Echo of the Poetic: Hardy and Adorno

Conclusion.............................................................................................................99
After the Sovereignty of Philosophy

Works Cited.........................................................................................................103

Index....................................................................................................................111

Notes....................................................................................................................113
PREFACE

Despite the passage of time necessary for decisive evaluation and the various
shifts of emphasis in literary criticism and theory in the intervening period, this
book attempts to both honour and extend the claims for literary criticism
projected by J. Hillis Miller in his preface to the 1975 edition of his work The
Disappearance of God:

To substitute language for consciousness, figurative for literal, intraliterary for
mimetic generation of meaning, time for space, the possibility of the dialogical
for the assumption of the monological, a permutative for a progressive theory of
literary history, would no doubt lead to different procedures of criticism.
Doubtless these would have their own tendency to predetermine the results of
criticism, for “questions,” as we know, “are remarks,” that is, already answers.
Whether a criticism keeping such possibilities open would necessarily forgo
those virtues of orderliness, of penetration, and of proximity to the texts which to
me seem present in the essays of The Disappearance of God remains to be seen.
(2000, xviii)

However, it is known well enough that admirable intentions do not guarantee
excellent results, and it is by no means abundantly clear, even to the author, that
the study presented here can lay claim to schematic order and potent insight.
The questions of “orderliness” and “penetration” then, certainly remain “to be
seen,” for although sincerely attempted, these are not matters upon which the
author is permitted to adjudicate. The dialogic, formal, and comparative analysis
offered here is not common, especially in respect to the conjoining of poetic and
philosophical works, and may give rise to questions of validity of method.
Theodor Adorno can answer any such potential queries in his typically concise
and cutting style:

Even someone believing himself convinced of the non-comparability of works of
art will find himself repeatedly involved in debates where works of art, and
precisely those of highest and therefore incommensurable rank, are compared and
evaluated one against the other. The objection that such considerations, which
come about in a peculiarly compulsive way, have their source in mercenary
instincts that would measure everything by the ell, usually signifies no more than
that solid citizens, for whom art can never be irrational enough, want to keep
serious reflection and the claims of truth far from the works. (1974, 75)
With Poetry and Philosophy ix
If any intimate awareness of the economy of effort involved bestows the
right to testify to the seriousness of the “reflection,” then perhaps the author in
this case can claim it. I believe the reflections in this book will prove “serious”
and interesting.

I wish to acknowledge Liguori Editore for their kind permission to publish a
version of the “The Prosaic Sublime: Wordsworth and Kant” which appeared in
La Questione Romantica: Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Politics, 10 (2001),
Liguori Editore Srl.

A version of the chapter on Hopkins and Kierkegaard was delivered at the
Hopkins Conference, Oriel College, Oxford, on September 25, 2004.

Acknowledgements are due to David Shepherd, Allan Christensen, Alastair
Renfrew, and Sandy Saddler.

My most essential obligation is recorded in the dedication.