"Fallen from the Symboled World": Precedents for the New FormalismThis study evaluates figure and form in contemporary poetry, especially the powers of simile and simile-like structures. Examining the works of Nemerov, Wilbur, Bowers, Hecht, Justice, Cunningham, Bishop, Van Duyn, Hollander, Pack, Kennedy, Ammons, Creeley, and Wright, Prunty argues that doubts about language, the tradition, and theistic assumptions embedded in the tradition have made simile and various simile-like arrangements into major modes of thought. From Lowell's early interest in the "similitudo" and the "phantasm" of Gilson, to Husserl's "phantasies" and Heidegger's interest in similitude, to the use made by contemporary poets of simile, he shows that metaphor--together with slippage, mimicry, synaphea, conjunctions, anacoluthon, chiasmus, and other simile-like patternings--have proven to be more trustworthy than symbol and allegory. Throughout the study, Prunty demonstrates that as uncertainty about language has changed from a predicament of mind to a new way of thinking, simile and simile-like occurrences have provided poetry with variational thought and constitutive power. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 23 | |
2 Emaciated Poetry and the Imaginative Diet | 57 |
3 Poems That Speak Poems That Sing | 89 |
Mimicry and Other Tropes | 143 |
5 Patterns of Similitude in the Poetry of Justice Hecht Van Duyn Bishop Wilbur Hollander Pack and Pinsky | 193 |
CONCLUSION | 293 |
NOTES | 301 |
INDEX | 311 |
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"Fallen from the Symboled World": Precedents for the New Formalism Wyatt Prunty Limited preview - 1990 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic allegory anacoluthon appears Bishop caesura catalog consciousness contemporary poetry context created dark death describes diction doubt Duyn echo emaciated poem enjambment example existential experience father figures free verse Hecht Hecht's Heidegger Howard Nemerov human Husserl Ibid idea incongruity irony Justice Justice's kind language light likening Loon's Cry Lowell Lowell's lyrical Martin Heidegger meaning metaphor metaphysical metonymy mimicry mind mirror modern modernist modes of thought move movement myth object once opposite paradox past perspective phenomenology play of similitude poem's poems that sing poems that speak poetic poets possible predicament question reader realism reflection relation Robert Lowell Robert Pinsky sense simile skepticism Skunk Hour slippage snow song speaker stand stanza Stevens suggests symbol and allegory synecdoche T. S. Eliot Tate tells things tion tradition tropes truth turns understanding wholeness Wilbur words Wright
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