Product Description
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) has been acknowledged by writers as diverse as Harold Bloom, Adrienne Rich and R.S. Thomas as one of the central poets of the 20th century. Justin Quinn offers a fundamental reassessment of Stevens's work and the connections it makes between nature, community and art. He engages fully with the recent wave of historicist criticism, and displays the shortcomings of this approach, not only for a reading of Stevens, but also for literature in general. Quinn asks in his introduction "why shouldn't there be a criticism which attends to the societal contexts of poetry without reneging on responsibilities to poetry as a discourse distinct from politics and ideology, one with its own special rhetorical funds and resources, which can nevertheless allow it to comment on the political aspects of our lives in special ways?" His book responds to that requirement and is a valuable contribution to the critical debate on Wallace Stevens's poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
Wallace Stevens and Literary Canonsby John Timberman NewcombThis revealing study traces the mechanism of literary evaluation by which the work of Wallace Stevens became a central and revered part of the treasury of modern American poetry. It is a study of literary canonization, and though focused only upon Stevens, it sheds a strong ray of light upon the processes of canon formation operating in twentieth-century America. Canonization is a phenomenon of literary culture. This analysis of how a writer advanced to the modern poetic canon is not only a study in literary criticism but also an examination of other types of literary enterprise-anthologies, textbooks, the work of other writers, the evaluations and decisions of publishers-that act and react in the formation of the canon. This study shows also how historical, ideological, and aesthetic factors figure into the literary equation that governs canon formation. Most recent biographical studies of Stevens offer a traditional view of the man and his poetry as monumental, self-contained entities of great value. In contrast, Wallace Stevens and Literary Canons evaluates the critical discourse on Stevens and treats it as an essential part of the culture and history from which it arose and gained prominence. Thus this study is not yet another interpretive reading of Stevens so much as a history of readings which analyze his life and work as they became significant to the broader literary culture. It analyzes Stevens's reception among his literary critics and in various institutions and ideological groups. The formation of the Stevens canon, as this book shows, was influenced by how he was treated in the work of other poets and artists, how he appears in letters, biographies, and histories of the period, how often he was represented in anthologies, surveys, and textbooks, and how he was affected by attitudes of prize-giving and subsidizing bodies and by academic pedagogy and publishing practices. Literary canonization is a process of continual reconstitution. This book argues that the character and the value of Stevens's poetry has been governed by the broad conception of modern poetic values as they formed and shifted through the decades. Re-evaluations persist as modern poetic theory evolves, oscillates, and undergoes reconception.John Timberman Newcomb is a professor of English at the University of Illinois. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Must for Studying the "Great" Early Modern Poets
So you think the critics give unqualified adoration to our early moderns?Think again.Stanford, in elegant, tight, perfectly clear prose tells the story of the revolution in poetry at the opening of the 20th century from adifferent point of view, that of the Wintersian formalists.These are thefollowers and students of the great poet and critic Yvor Winters, whoseradically neo-classical views cause a storm of debate in the first half ofthe century.(See my reviews of Winters books at my amazon site.) Stanford incisively explores the poetry of five great poets and makes astrong case for the stature of Robinson and Winters -- can you believethat? -- above that of the divinely canonized threesome also studied here. You will never read Stevens (who's the best of the remaining three), Pound,or Eliot the same again after you have studied them carefully withStanford.This is a masterful work of literary criticism and one muchneeded in our chaotic times in the field of poetry.Moreover, it is astirring treatise on the value of poetry to life and thought, a commentthat would be the summit of praise coming from Yvor.I hope you'll givethis great book a try if you love poetry.It might change your wholeapproach to the art.It's not that Stanford will induce you to leave Eliotand Pound behind, but open you up to greater vistas in the high arts ofhuman language.Be sure to check out my other recommendations at myamazon.com personal site. ... Read more

Product Description
The relationship between literature and religion is one of the most groundbreaking and challenging areas of Romantic studies. Covering the entire field of Romanticism from its eighteenth-century origins in the writing of William Cowper and its proleptic stirrings in "Paradise Lost" to late-twentieth-century manifestations in the work of Wallace Stevens, the essays in this timely volume explore subjects such as Romantic attitudes towards creativity and its relation to suffering and religious apprehension; the allure of the 'veiled' and the figure of the monk in Gothic and Romantic writing; Miltonic light and inspiration in the work of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats; the relationship between Southey's and Coleridge's anti-Catholicism and definitions of religious faith in the Romantic period; the stammering of Romantic attempts to figure the ineffable; the emergence of a feminised Christianity and a gendered sublime; and the development of Calvinism and its role in contemporary religious controversies.Its primary focus is the canonical Romantic poets, with a particular emphasis on Byron, whose work is most in need of critical reevaluation given its engagement with the Christian and Islamic worlds and its critique of totalising religious and secular readings. The collection is an original and much-needed intervention in Romantic studies, bringing together the contextual awareness of recent historicist scholarship with the newly awakened interest in matters of form and an appreciation of the challenges of postmodern theory. ... Read more

Product Description
A reappraisal of Wallace Stevens, presenting him as more a love poet than a metaphysical reductionist. Stevens' work is examined with regard to the tradition of eloquent, though quirkily independent, American writers; to speculative theology; and to the medieval models of Villon and Dante. ... Read more

Product Description
In the first full-length study of Wallace Stevens's word-play, Eleanor Cook focuses on Stevens's skillful play with grammar, etymology, allusion, and other elements of poetry, and suggests ways in which this play offers a method of approaching his work. At the same time, this book is a general study of Stevens's poetry, moving from his earliest to his latest work, and includes close readings of three of his remarkable long poems--Esthetique du Mal, Notes toward a Supreme Fiction, and An Ordinary Evening in New Haven. The chronological arrangement enables readers to follow Stevens's increasing skill and changing thought in three areas of his "poetry of the earth": the poetry of place, the poetry of eros, and the poetry of belief.Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens shows how, in setting words at play and in conflict, Stevens could upset the usual relations of rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic, and thus the book contributes to the current debate about logical and a-logical uses of language. Cook also places Stevens within the larger context of Western literature, hearing how he speaks to Milton, Keats, and Wordsworth; to such American forebears as Whitman, Emerson, and Dickinson; and to T. S. Eliot, his contemporary. ... Read more

Product Description
The Never-Resting Mind explores Wallace Stevens' poetic use and transformation of a major strain of romantic thought. Romantic irony, a philosophical attempt to explain the mind's ability to both construct the world and see beyond its own constructions, was first theorized in the late eighteenth century by Friedrich Schlegel. An opposing view of the concept emerged in attacks on Schlegel's theory by Hegel and Kierkegaard. This study describes the complex expression of these antithetical senses of irony--one that gestures toward engagement, the other toward transcendence--in Stevens' work, in the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, and in postmodern authors such as Barthelme and Ashberry.
Beginning with a thorough outline of the debates about romantic irony that the twentieth century inherited, Whiting makes the case for the importance of the concept to the modern period. He then turns more fully to Stevens' poetry, exploring Stevens' expressions of romantic irony in fresh and arresting readings of individual poems. Stevens' poetry shows us not only both senses of romantic irony but also the unresolved, indeed unresolvable conflict between them; in this way, Whiting argues, Stevens may be the modern heir most burdened by this aspect of his romantic inheritance.
The Never-Resting Mind breaks new ground while complementing biographical and "new historical" approaches. It has something to offer all those interested in the immediate foreground and general background of modern poetry.
"This thoughtful and well-balanced book is a substantial addition to our current understanding of Stevens' poetry and its place in the tradition of English philosophical verse." --A. Walton Litz, Princeton University
Anthony Whiting received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is currently working on a study of American poetry in the Progressive era.
... Read more