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The Fourth Dimension of a Poem

Page 25

by M H Abrams


  language games, 98, 125–26, 129

  language-in-general, 57, 58, 61, 74–75

  language-in-use, 57, 61, 69, 86

  language of concern, 97

  langue, 58, 64

  l’art pour l’art, 157, 180, 182, 183, 193n

  law of sufficient reason, 97

  Lawrence, D. H., xi, 147–48

  laws of motion, 126

  lecture, 59

  Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 158

  Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 202–3

  Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 55

  liberation rhetoric, 66

  light, 73

  literary criticism, language considered by and in itself in, 57

  literary theory:

  classical, x

  Romantic, x

  literature, humanistic view of intermediary by, 57

  Locke, John, 157, 158

  logical, logic, 65, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103

  deductive, 97

  logocentric language, 74, 86

  Lolita (Nabokov), 1–2

  Longinus, x, 69, 155

  Lorraine, Claude, 44

  love, 14–18, 171–72, 177, 178

  Augustine’s doctrine of, 169–71, 174

  as desire for beauty, 166–67

  “Lucy” poems (Wordsworth), 108, 114–15

  Luke, Gospel of, 196–97

  Lutheranism, 177

  Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge), 114, 214, 223–24

  magical realism, 72

  maker, as poet, 155

  Mallarmé, Stéphane, 72, 183

  “Manfred” (Byron), 202

  “Mansions” (Ammons), 22–29, 149

  mark, 75

  Marxist criticism, 103

  Marxists, discourse seen as constituted by ideology by, 76–77

  material signifier, 32

  material sublime, 39

  meaning, 61, 65

  free generation of, 66

  in “Ode to Autumn,” 46–47

  of “On This Island,” 6

  mechanism, 134–35, 136

  Mendelssohn, Moses, 174, 191n

  metafiction, 91n

  metaphors, 91n

  metaphysics, 163, 179, 183, 199

  as journey, 208–10

  meter, in “Ode to Autumn,” 46–47

  Michelangelo, 187

  Middle Ages, 156, 200

  Mill, John Stuart, 54

  Miller, J. Hillis, 64, 81, 84–85, 88n

  fixed meanings denied by, 107

  Milton, John, 34, 221, 224

  mimesis, 152

  mind, in Wordsworth’s metaphor, 138–39

  Mirror and the Lamp, The: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Abrams), x–xi

  misprision, 106

  misreading, 85, 106

  by author, 91n

  Mitchell, Margaret, 20

  mixed motives, 218

  Modern Language Association, 85

  Molière, 80

  Morgenstunden (Mendelssohn), 191n

  Moritz, Karl Philipp, 174–77, 178, 179, 192n

  Moses, 196

  motion, laws of, 126

  motive, 66

  Murdoch, Iris, 186–87, 195n

  music, 151, 156, 162

  “My First Acquaintance with Poets” (Hazlitt), 214, 226

  Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 221–22

  narrative, reference of, 59, 79

  Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (Abrams), xi

  nature, 70

  humanization of, 136–40

  religion of, 131

  in Romantic poets, 130–50

  self vs., 135–40

  Neate, Bill, 226

  neo-Marxism, 85

  Neoplatonic idealism, 38

  neopragmatism, 74

  Nether Stowey, U.K., 214

  New Critics, 30, 103, 152, 154, 187

  on self-sufficiency of poems, 186

  New Historicism, 54, 63, 85

  New Testament, 168, 195

  Newton, Isaac, 126, 133–34, 143

  Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 190n

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 101, 159

  contemplation model denigrated by, 188

  power principle and, 220

  nihilism, 101

  Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 187

  non-ego, 135

  nonhumanistic, 93

  nonreference, 152

  “Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae,” see “Cynara” (Dowson)

  Novalis, 141, 204

  “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” (Tennyson), 14–18

  stanzas of, 15

  object, 135

  objectivity, 58

  “Ode on Melancholy” (Keats), 36, 37–38, 41

  odes, 42

  “Ode to a Grecian Urn” (Keats), 41

  “Ode to a Nightingale” (Keats), 33, 35, 36–37, 41

  “Ode to Autumn” (Keats), 37, 41–50, 51n

  enunciation in, 44

  punctuation of, 51n–54n

  setting of, 45–46

  triple suspension in, 46–47

  “Ode to Evening” (Collins), 42–44, 45–46, 48–49

  oral feel of, 43

  Ode to Psyche (Keats), 38, 41

  “Ode to the West Wind” (Shelley), 23, 24

  Odyssey (Homer), 198, 206

  “Of Tragedy” (Hume), 90n

  Olafson, Frederick, 93–94, 97, 98, 100, 101

  Old Testament, 168, 195–96

  “On a Sun-Dial” (Hazlitt), xii–xiii

  On Christian Doctrine (Augustine), 169

  “On Depth and Superficiality” (Hazlitt), 220–21

  one life, 131

  One Primal Man, 147–48

  “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (Keats), 50

  “On Friendship” (Cicero), 190n

  “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry” (Schiller), 206, 218

  “On Poesy or Art” (Coleridge), 135

  “On Poetry in General” (Hazlitt), 218–19, 220

  “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” (Keats), 79

  On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Schiller), 206

  “On the Formative Imitation of the Beautiful” (Moritz), 176–77

  “On the Pleasure of Hating” (Hazlitt), 224

  On the Principles of Human Action (Hazlitt), 217

  On the Trinity (Augustine), 169

  “On This Island” (Auden), 4–10

  act of utterance of, 6, 8–10

  meaning of, 6

  speech sounds in, 4–6

  stresses in, 8

  visual appearance of, 4, 7

  oral echoism, 6

  Order of Things, The (Foucault), 55

  Origen, 168

  overpopulation, 131

  paintings, 151, 156, 161, 162, 189n

  Palmer, Samuel, 51n

  pantheism, 108

  Paris, student uprisings in, 66

  Park, Clara Claiborne, 79

  parole, 58, 109

  participation, 105

  passion, 217

  pastoral elegies, 146–47

  Pater, Walter, xi

  Paul, Saint, 129, 169, 170, 196

  perception, Locke’s philosophy of, 157

  peregrination vitae, 195–212

  performative, 65

  personal identity
, 70

  personification, of text, 62–65

  Petrarchan sonnet, 12

  Phaedo (Plato), 194n

  Phaedrus (Plato), 194n

  phallocentricism, 77

  Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel), 141, 208–10

  Philebus (Plato), 167

  Philosophical Lectures (Coleridge), 144

  philosophy, dualism in, 134

  phonocentrism, 32

  Pietà, 187

  Pietism, 177, 178

  Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 201

  Pisgah, Mount, 196

  Plato, 158, 182, 188

  art derogated by, 186

  ideal essence represented by, 166–67

  Platonic dialogues, 70

  Platonic model of self-sufficient beauty, 179–80

  Platonic philosophy of art, 38, 39–40, 182, 184

  Platonists, 164

  pleasure, calculus of, 220

  “Pleasures of the Imagination, The” (Addison), 157–58

  Plotinus, 167–68, 179, 199

  pluralism, 99

  Poe, Edgar Allen, 180, 183

  poema, 67, 155

  poems, poetry:

  as expression of imagination, 132

  as fine art, 151, 161, 162, 189n

  material medium of, 31

  meaning of, 2, 3, 4, 106–29

  as most intimate of arts, 2

  physical aspect of, 1–3, 4

  poems, poetry (continued)

  reading aloud, 3–4, 9

  sound of, 2, 4

  visible aspect of, 2, 4

  “Poems of the Imagination” (Wordsworth), 115

  poésie pure, La, 183

  poet, as maker, 155

  poeta, 67, 155

  Poetics (Aristotle), 69, 96, 99, 155–56

  Political Essays (Hazlitt), 225

  political evils, 55

  pollution, 131

  Pope, Alexander, 35, 216

  Porter, Cole, 20

  positivism, 67

  postmodernism, 91n

  post-Newtonian world, 133, 143

  postructuralism, 53, 69

  author seen as agency by, 58

  feminism and, 77

  language-in-general and, 57

  theory privileged over reality in, 76–77, 79, 81–87

  translocation of initiative in, 62

  ultrastructuralism vs., 74

  postscientific inhumanism, 78

  poststructuralism, as seen by humanists, 72–74, 77

  poststructural theorists, 30

  humanism seen as root cause of social and political evil by, 55–56

  readers’ freedom celebrated by, 59

  Pound, Ezra, 3, 222

  power, 63, 76, 81

  in Hazlitt’s criticism, 217, 219–25

  power principle, 220

  pragmatism, 70

  prayer, 178, 187

  Prelude, The (Wordsworth), 116–17, 137, 138–40, 145, 208, 210

  presence, 61

  primitives, 70–71, 78

  Proclus, 199

  prodesse et delectare, 156

  prodigal son, 196–97

  Prometheus, 204

  Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 204

  Promised Land, 196

  property rights, 67

  proportion, 165

  prosopopeia, 62–63

  Proust, Marcel, 91n

  Pseudo-Dionysus, 168, 169

  psychology, dualism in, 134

  pure form, 184

  purposefulness without a purpose, 160

  purposes, 94, 98

  purposiveness, 62, 78, 134

  Quietist sect, 175, 179

  racial repression, 56

  Raleigh, Walter, 124

  rationality, 97, 100

  readers, 59–60

  realism, 72

  reality, appearance vs., 70

  recalcitrancies, 121–23

  Recluse, The (Wordsworth), 208

  redemption, 203

  reference, in art, 153

  reference effect, 60

  “Reflective” (Ammons), 149–50

  Reformers, 225

  reintegration, 144

  in “Adonais,” 146–47

  in Apocalypse, 148

  in “The force that through the green fuse,” 148–49

  in Hyperion, 145–46

  in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” 141–43

  relativism, as threat to humanities, 94, 95, 96–97, 98–99

  religion:

  of art, 183, 185

  utilitarian, 164

  religion of nature, 131

  religious formulations, as replaced by high Romantic speculations and visions, xi

  Renaissance, 155, 156, 182

  Republic (Plato), 167

  responsibility, 98

  Revelation, Book of, 197, 199

  Reynolds, John Hamilton, 39, 45

  rhetoric, classical writers on, 69, 155–56

  rhetorical, 65

  rhetoricians, 155

  Ricks, Christopher, 35

  “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The” (Coleridge), 141–43, 202

  Robinson, Henry Crabb, 193n

  Romanes lecture, 186–87

  Romans, Epistle to, 197

  Romantic literary theory, x

  Romantic poets:

  journey of life seen by, 203–10

  metaphors of, 136–40

  nature seen by, 130–50

  religion of nature of, 131

  Rorty, Richard, 74

  Rossiter, A. P., 127

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 64, 80–81

  “Ruined Cottage, The” (Wordsworth), 135, 136–37

  Sage Chapel, 3

  salvation history, 202

  Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), 204–5

  Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 135–36, 162, 206

  Schiller, Friedrich, 162, 206–7, 218

  Schlegel, Friedrich, 162

  Schopenhauer, Arthur, 162, 179

  science, 38–39, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 103

  and alienation from nature, 150

  sciences, human, and deletion of human, 55

  scientism, 98

  scriptor, 58, 65, 88n

  sculpture, 151, 156, 161, 189n

  Searle, John, 60, 75

  Seasons (Thomson), 52n

  self, 70

  nature vs., 135–40

  self-consciousness, 148

  self-interest, self-love, 164, 171

  self-sufficiency, 152, 154, 167, 174, 176

  beauty and, 192n

  of God, 170, 181

  Mallarmé’s view of poetry as, 183

  New Critics’ commitment to, 186

  Platonic model of beauty as, 179–80

  semantic communication, 59

  semiology, 64

  semiotics, 31

  sense experience, 51n

  Sermons (Whichcote), 171

  Seven Types of Ambiguity (Empson), 127

  sexual repression, 56

  Shaftesbury, Earl of, 157, 158, 164–66, 171–73, 178

  Shakespeare, William, 24, 34, 79, 221

  ambiguity in, 127–28

  as disinterested, 218

  interpretations of, 102–3

  “She Dwelt among th’ Untrodden Ways” (Wordsworth), 114

  Shelley, Percy Bysshe
, x, 23, 24, 132, 150, 200

  “Adonais,” 146–47

  sound of, 31

  significant form, 184

  significations, 61, 66

  infinite number of, 107

  Sinai, Mount, 196

  skepticism, 72

  double life and, 70, 85–86, 90n

  self and, 70

  as threat to humanities, 94, 95–97, 98–99, 100–101, 125

  “Slumber, A” (Wordsworth), 107–26

  author’s seminar students’ reading of, 111, 125

  claim of ambivalence in, 127, 128

  as compared to other Wordsworth poems, 114–18

  Davies’ reading of trancelike state in, 108–24, 129

  intention in, 112–16

  shift in tense of, 124

  standard reading of, 108–24

  social repression, 55–56

  Socrates, 70, 101

  Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 101

  Song of Songs, 199

  sound, 31–32

  South Africa, 83

  Southey, Robert, 219

  Spanish Tragedy, The (Kyd), 104

  Spanos, William, 56

  spectator, 157–58, 159, 164

  speech, 32, 61

  Spenser, Edmund, 34, 201

  Sperry, Stuart, 38

  spirit, 38, 135, 209–10

  in “A Slumber,” 108–24

  Spirit of the Age, The (Hazlitt), 223–24

  spirits, 39

  spiritual, 38

  spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, 12–13

  “Spot of Time,” 137

  stability, 83–84

  status, 66

  Stevens, Wallace, xi

  Stevenson, R. L., xii, 227

  “Still” (Ammons), 149

  Stillinger, Jack, 52n

  Stolnitz, Jerome, 153–54

  “Strange Fits of Passion,” 119–20

  Strauss, Johann, 20

  stressed syllables, in Auden, 4

  structuralism, 42, 53, 69, 103, 187

  author seen as space by, 58

  decentering of, 55

  Foucault’s denunciation of structural model of semiology of, 64

  humans seen as empty by, 55, 57

  language-in-general and, 57

  merits of, 73

  readers’ role analyzed in, 59

  as seen by humanists, 72–74

  text as self-sustaining system in, 152

  structure, 102

  “Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric” (Abrams), xi

  student uprisings (Paris 1968), 66

  subject, 58, 135

  subjectivity, 58

  de Man’s reduction of, 80–81

  and judgment of art, 158–59

  sublime, sublimation, 39

  sublime style, 69

  Sulzer, J. G., 189n

  summum bonum, 164, 170, 177

  supernationalism, 78

  “Surprised by Joy” (Wordsworth), 12–14

 

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