Poetry and PragmatismRichard Poirier, one of America's most eminent critics, reveals in this book the creative but mostly hidden alliance between American pragmatism and American poetry. He brilliantly traces pragmatism as a philosophical and literary practice grounded in a linguistic skepticism that runs from Emerson and William James to the work of Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens, and on to the cultural debates of today. More powerfully than ever before, Poirier shows that pragmatism had its start in Emerson, the great example to all his successors of how it is possible to redeem even as you set out to change the literature of the past. Poirier demonstrates that Emerson--and later William James--were essentially philosophers of language, and that it is language that embodies our cultural past, an inheritance to be struggled with, and transformed, before being handed on to future generations. He maintains that in Emersonian pragmatist writing, any loss--personal or cultural--gives way to a quest for what he calls "superfluousness," a kind of rhetorical excess by which powerfully creative individuals try to elude deprivation and stasis. In a wide-ranging meditation on what James called "the vague," Poirier extols the authentic voice of individualism, which, he argues, is tentative and casual rather than aggressive and dogmatic. The concluding chapters describe the possibilities for criticism created by this radically different understanding of reading and writing, which are nothing less than a reinvention of literary tradition itself. Poirier's discovery of this tradition illuminates the work of many of the most important figures in American philosophy and poetry. His reanimation of pragmatism also calls for a redirection of contemporary criticism, so that readers inside as well as outside the academy can begin to respond to poetic language as the source of meaning, not to meaning as the source of language. |
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Página 174
I am acutely aware in all my references to Amherst that the credit I give to Hum 6
at Harvard, and to its founder Reuben Brower, could be differently distributed so
as to allow more prominence to some teachers at Amherst who were Brower's ...
I am acutely aware in all my references to Amherst that the credit I give to Hum 6
at Harvard, and to its founder Reuben Brower, could be differently distributed so
as to allow more prominence to some teachers at Amherst who were Brower's ...
Página 177
... who was my tutor after that at Downing College, Cambridge, a famous
classroom teacher who refused Rene Wellek's much publicized invitation to
translate his practices into theoretical justifications; and Reuben Brower, from
whom I never ...
... who was my tutor after that at Downing College, Cambridge, a famous
classroom teacher who refused Rene Wellek's much publicized invitation to
translate his practices into theoretical justifications; and Reuben Brower, from
whom I never ...
Página 178
Brower's course taught me, as did Emerson's linguistic skepticism, much that has
since been theoretically formulated, ... Reuben Brower . . . taught an
undergraduate course [at Harvard] in General Education entitled 'The
Interpretation of ...
Brower's course taught me, as did Emerson's linguistic skepticism, much that has
since been theoretically formulated, ... Reuben Brower . . . taught an
undergraduate course [at Harvard] in General Education entitled 'The
Interpretation of ...
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Poetry and pragmatism
Crítica de los usuarios - Not Available - Book VerdictStarting from the position of "linguistic skepticism,'' the view that language and the concept of truth are inadequate to the task of describing reality or containing experience, Poirer sees the ... Leer comentario completo
Contenido
Introduction | 3 |
Superfluous Emerson | 37 |
The Transfiguration of Work | 79 |
Derechos de autor | |
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action allusiveness already Amherst asks become Brower called circle claim course criticism cultural D. H. Lawrence deconstructive Dewey discover effort Emer Emerson Emersonian pragmatism Emersonian pragmatists especially essay evidence exist experience expression fact feeling fiction forever Frost genius George Kateb Gertrude Stein Harold Bloom Harvard human idea ideal imagined individual inheritance invention James's Joel Porte John Dewey kind language lectures less linguistic literary literature means Mending Wall metaphors mind Moby-Dick nature never ourselves passage past philosophers phrase poem poet poetic poetry present production Ralph Waldo Emerson readers reality refers Reuben Brower rhetoric Robert Frost says Self-Reliance sense sentence Shakespeare simply skepticism social soul sound speak Stanley Cavell Stevens Stevens's stream suggest superfluity T. S. Eliot talk texts theory things Thoreau thought tion transition troping University Press vagueness voice Waldo Wallace Stevens Whitman William James words