The American SublimeMary Arensberg SUNY Press, 1986 M01 1 - 218 pages American poetics has been radicalized in recent years by revisionist theories which replay and ground poets against their Romantic precursors. Beginning with the sublime politics of Emerson and ending with women poets who renounce the authority of gender, The American Sublime represents the various modes of recent critical thinking. This collection of essays takes up the mapping of the American sublime begun by Harold Bloo. Prefaced by an introduction that traces the sublime from its origins in Longinus through Kant, Freud and Bloom, the essays focus on central American poetic scenes. These include the transparency of Emerson's vision of the sublime, Whitman's passage to India, Dickinson's corridors of the soul, and Stevens' contemplation of death in the auroras. |
Contents
Introduction The American Sublime | |
Sublime Politics | 15 |
On the Border of History Whitman and the American Sublime | 45 |
Dickinson and the Haunting of the Self | 77 |
Emily Dickinsons Calculated Sublime | 95 |
Kant and Stevens The Dynamics of the Sublime and the Dynamics of Poetry | 125 |
White Mythology and the American Sublime Stevens Auroral Fantasy | 147 |
In the Twilight of the Gods Women Poets and The American Sublime | 167 |
Index | 207 |
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Common terms and phrases
absence abyss Adrienne Rich aesthetics American sublime appears Auroras beautiful becomes Bishop boundary Bruce Clarke canto circumference consciousness Critique death Dickinson discipline discourse displacement dynamics of poetry Elizabeth Bishop Emerson Emersonian Emily Dickinson essay ethical experience external father fiction figure force freedom Freud gesture Harold Bloom haunted horizon human idea idealist identification imagination irrational Kant Kant's Kantian language Leaves of Grass loneliness Marianne Moore mathematics means metalepsis metaphor modern Monk's mother nature nature's never object origins passage Passage to India past poem poem's poet poet's poetic presence primal quest reader reading realm reason relationship representation repression rhetoric romantic sublime romanticism scene sense silence song soul space stanza Stonum subreption symbol takes tion trace tradition transcendent transparent eyeball trope turn Ulysses University Press vision voice Wallace Stevens Walt Whitman Weiskel Whitman woman women poets word writing