Poetry and the Fate of the Senses
Poetry and the Fate of the Senses
Herself an acclaimed poet, Stewart not only brings the intelligence of a critic to the question of poetry, but the insight of a practitioner as well. Her new study draws on reading from the ancient Greeks to the postmoderns to explain how poetry creates meanings between persons. Poetry and the Fate of the Senses includes close discussions of poems by Stevens, Hopkins, Keats, Hardy, Bishop, and Traherne, of the sense of vertigo in Baroque and Romantic works, and of the rich tradition of nocturnes in visual, musical, and verbal art. Ultimately, Stewart explores the pivotal role of poetry in contemporary culture. She argues that poetry can counter the denigration of the senses and can expand our imagination of the range of human expression.
Poetry and the Fate of the Senses won the 2004 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. It also won the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s 2002 Christian Gauss Award for Literary Criticism.
458 pages | 10 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2001
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 IN THE DARKNESS
I.The Privations of Night and the Origins of Poiesis
II.Laughter, Weeping, and the Order of the Senses
III.The Lyric Eidos
CHAPTER 2 SOUND
I.Dynamics of Poetic Sound
II.Hopkins: Invocation and Listening
CHAPTER 3 VOICE AND POSSESSION
I.The Beloved’s Voice
II.Three Cases of Lyric Possession
CHAPTER 4 FACING, TOUCH, AND VERTIGO
I.The Experience of Beholding
II.Touch in Aesthetic Form
III.Vertigo: The Legacy of Baroque Ecstasy
CHAPTER 5 THE FORMS AND NUMBERS OF TIME
I.The Deictic Now
II.Traces of Human Motion: The Ubi Sunt Tradition
III.Meditation and Number: Traherne’s Centuries
IV.The Problem of Poetic History
CHAPTER 6 OUT OF THE DARKNESS: NOCTURNES
I.Finch’s Transformation of the Night Work
II.The Emergence of a Nocturne Tradition
CHAPTER 7 LYRIC COUNTER EPIC
I.War and the Alienation of the Senses
II.Two Lyric Critiques of Epic: Brooks and Walcott
AFTERBORN
NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX OF POEMS
GENERAL INDEX
Awards
Phi Beta Kappa: Christian Gauss Award
Won
Modern Language Association of America: James Russell Lowell Prize
Honorable Mention
University of Iowa-Truman Capote Estate: Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism
Won
Be the first to know
Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!