CHARTING LANDSCAPES IN WALLACE STEVENS' POETRY
Abstract
In a series of progressive refinements during his career, Stevens shows his poetic figures arranging and framing spaces within their landscapes to create order out of a God-absented universe. My dissertation analyzes these refinements and illustrates Stevens' charting of emotional landscapes in his journey through the self. In the essay "Imagination as Value," charting these landscapes involves penetrating "to basic images, basic emotions . . . to compose a fundamental poetry even older than the ancient world" (NA, 145). As though wedding "basic images" to "basic emotions" leads him toward self-discovery, he links the bird figure to the basic emotions surrounding self-discovery: fear, fortitude of spirit, and confidence gained from ventures made. These emotions are absolutely crucial to the poet, not only for emotional maturity, but for imaginative growth and development as well. Most appropriately, Stevens metaphorically unites those emotions surrounding imaginative growth and "flights" of the mind with the bird, that creature which explores its landscapes through physical flights. These connections between the bird and the poet's development take their strength from Stevens' ability to plumb the depths of the subconscious. In his early poetry (1915-23), Stevens certainly sees "infinite incantations" of himself and his fears through the "perished swans" in "Academic Discourse" (1923) and through the white pigeon and red bird in "Le Monocle" (1918). Moving away from these early fears, he develops a fortitude of spirit in the experimental poems (1935-40), and later gains the confidence of a master poet ordering his world through meditation (1942-55). Whereas the early bird figures lead the young poet who depends on his imagery for direction, the late bird figures in poems such as "Notes" (1942), "The Dove in the Belly" (1946), and "The Bouquet" (1948) receive their shapes, indeed their origins, from the poet figure as he arranges the spaces of his landscapes.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
American literature
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