Calling from Diffusion: Hermeneutics of the PromenadeBased on four Nielson Lectures delivered at Smith College, this book examines a series of "promenade poems," lyrics that follow a poetic speaker moving through a landscape and responding to it. Thomas M. Greene invites the reader to consider a wide range of poets, beginning with Amy Clampitt and A. R. Ammons, continuing with Petrarch, Ronsard, Saint-Amant, Milton, Vaughan, and Marvell, and concluding with two representative Romantics, Wordsworth and Whitman. Greene's discussions of this rich body of texts stimulate reflection at several levels. They can be read first of all simply as analyses of several memorable poems exhibiting a similar structure over a period of seven centuries. They can also be read as meditations on the workings of lyric poetry, which is always attempting to bring into sharper focus the sensibility of a speaker whose emergence depends on her naming and evoking the objects surrounding her. Thus Greene argues that the distinction of a poetic consciousness lies in its "permeability," permitting a more intimate interplay between internal and external realms. His title is drawn from a line by Whitman: "You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!" Finally, at yet another level, Greene's book presents a way of thinking about language which, recalling the Heideggerean theory of "ereignis," suggests that only through the projective act of naming can human beings assimilate things through intuitive knowledge. An afterword, "The Morality of Literary Interpretation," surveys critically a range of hermeneutic theories and formulates a position that accords the literary text both autonomy and mystery. |
From inside the book
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... human consciousness . It contains as well , like all interesting promenade poems , the definition of a sensibility through the performance of perception . A sensibility might be defined as a " style of perceiving . " In a good poem like ...
... human beings , and human beings rarely make perfectly invulnerable products , as Amy Clampitt understood . It is not surprising if , even in the most memorable and powerful texts , problems and pathologies begin to emerge . We today are ...
... human existence and human creativity . Language then , in Whitman , and especially poetic language , emerges as a specific means of dealing with our human poverty . It is ultimately language , for him , that can solace our neediness ...
Contents
Circles and Variations | 15 |
Utopias of Solitude | 29 |
Getting Engaged | 49 |
Copyright | |
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