Approaching Authority: Transpersonal Gestures in the Poetry of Yeats, Eliot, and WilliamsThis study, using the example of Yeats, Eliot, and Williams, examines the principal gestures of Modernist poetic speakers attempting to identify, mediate, and project cultural authority. To effect this mediation, the poetic speakers must engage in "transpersonality"; by association with the objects of presences in the poem, they must translate their finite egos into mediating voices detached from the concerns of unique selfhood. However, complete transpersonality brings silence: the fact of utterance presupposes a unique perspective, never the totality of perspectives that an atemporal authority possesses. So, rather than the speaker's elevation to a position of authority, the necessary result of the transpersonality is instead that the speaker approach authority in calculated acts of mystification. |
Contents
| 11 | |
The Poles of Poetic Authority Logos and Ego in Paradise Lost and The Prelude | 44 |
The Archetype of Failure Egocentered Authority in The Tower | 72 |
Speech without Self Logoscentered Authority in Four Quartets | 103 |
Williamss Unmade World Coextensive Authority in Paterson | 144 |
Epilogue | 206 |
Notes | 209 |
Works Cited | 226 |
Index | 231 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract archetypal argues assert atemporal authority authenticity authority to mediate Book Burnt Norton centered authority claims co-extensive authority consciousness consequence create creative Cress cultural authority death descent desire display divine Dry Salvages East Coker effort ego and Logos ego-centered authority ego's Eliot empirical exist experience expressed failure figurative level Four Quartets gestures Hanrahan hieratic homologous idea ideal identify identity images imagination individual inevitable interpretive language Little Gidding Logos-centered authority Mary Hynes meaning mind mind's modern modernist movement Nature objective world passage Paterson perceived perception poem poem's poet poet's poetic authority poetic speaker poetry position presence pride prior projected reader purpose reading reality relationship reorientation rhetorical role Romantic Romantic poetry self-consciousness self's sense speaker and projected speaking ego structure T.S. Eliot temporal textual voice thority tion Tower tradition transpersonal University Press vision W.B. Yeats William Carlos Williams Williams's Yeats Yeats's younger
Popular passages
Page 115 - At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity. Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
Page 133 - For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment, the moment in and out of time, The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.
Page 49 - OF Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought Death into the world and all our woe, With loss of Eden (till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat!), Sing, heavenly Muse...
Page 52 - Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill...
Page 60 - Was it for this That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice 'That flowed along my dreams...
Page 49 - Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st ; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant...
Page 54 - Urania, and fit audience find, though few-. But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd Both harp and voice ; nor could the muse defend Her son.
Page 51 - Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell ? before the sun, Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite.
Page 51 - Though hard and rare : thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp ; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled.
Page 56 - Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deem'd, chief mastery to dissect, With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights In battles feign'd; the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields.