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A Study of Intellectual Theism in the Poetry and Criticism of Yvor Winters. John Martin Finlay Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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A Study of Intellectual Theism in the Poetry and Criticism of Yvor Winters. John Martin Finlay Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1980 The nfleshedU yE e: a Study of Intellectual Theism in the Poetry and Criticism of Yvor Winters. John Martin Finlay Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Finlay, John Martin, "The nfleU shed Eye: a Study of Intellectual Theism in the Poetry and Criticism of Yvor Winters." (1980). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3561. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3561 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. Hie following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or nGiutions which msy appear on tins reproduction. 1. The sign or “target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is “Missing Page(s)” . I f it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting through an image and duplicating adjacent pages to assure you o f complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark it is an indication that the film inspector noticed either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, or duplicate copy. Unless we meant to delete copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed, you will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., is part of the material being photo­ graphed the photographer has followed a definite method in “sectioning” the material. It is customary to begin filming at the upper left hand comer of a large sheet and to continue from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. If necessary, sectioning is continued again—beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. For any illustrations that cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by xerography, photographic prints can be purchased at additional cost and tipped into your xerographic copy. Requests can be made to our Dissertations Customer Services Department. 5. Some pages in any document may have indistinct print. In all cases we have filmed the best available copy. University M icrofilm s International 300 N. ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8110415 F in l a y , Jo h n M a r t in THE UNFLESHED EYE: A STUDY OF INTELLECTUAL THEISM IN THE POETRY AND CRITICISM OF YVOR WINTERS The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical PH.D.Col 1980 University Microfilms Internationa! 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M I 48106 Copyright 1981 by Finlay, John Martin All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE UNFLESHED EYE: A STUDY OF INTELLECTUAL THEISM IN THE POETRY AND CRITICISM OF YVOR WINTERS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by John Martin Finlay B.A., University of Alabama, 1965 M.A., University of Alabama, 1966 December, 1980 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like particularly to thank my major profes­ sor, Dr. Donald E. Stanford, for the generous help and encouragement he has given me not only during the writing of this dissertation, but throughout all my graduate career. Acknowledgements are also due Dr. John Wildman and Dr. James Babin for their careful reading of the text and for their helpful criticisms. I would also like to thank Lindon Stall, Cathy Edmonston, and Faye Rifkind for the many personal assistances and encouragements they have also given me. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements ..................................... ii Abstract..............................................iv Introduction....................................... 1 Chapter I. The Free Verse of Yvor Winters: Grounds of Reaction......................... 10 II. Towards a Definition of God..................65 III. The Consequences of T h e i s m ................ 125 IV. "The Unfleshed Eye"......................... 171 Bibliography.........................................197 Vita................................................. 202 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Yvor Winters' early poetry, from 1920 to 1928, was written in free-verse; the aesthetic principle governing it centered on the image "purified" of conceptual content, and consisting of a "fusion" between the natural object being described and the poet's own mind. The result is a kind of naturalistic mysticism, destructive of judge­ ments and evaluations of the conscious intellect. The early poetry also registers the effect of certain scien­ tific theories on Winters' mind; these theories were mechanistic and deterministic in nature, and they turned Winters' world into one in which moral and intellectual values had no reality. Other themes that appear in the early poems are the absence, or non-existence, of God, the fear of death, and the apprehension that the ultimate nature of the universe might be demonic. In the late twenties Winters underwent an artistic and intellectual reformation in reaction to the free-verse and the stylistic violence which that verse finally de­ generated into. He embraced a classicism that respected and acted upon the powers of the conscious mind. Writing in conventional meter and employing a style both imagistic iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and abstract, he wrote poems dealing with the possibil­ ity, and the realization, of morai control and intellec­ tual order. His new poetics rested on the philosophical assumption that absolute truth exists. In order to safe­ guard that truth and save himself from subjective rela­ tivism, he was driven by what: he viewed as philosophical necessity to a theistic position. He was influenced in this process by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Only the existence of God could guarantee and validate truth and assure its independence of the human mind. Winters most reluctantly admitted theism. He had an instinctive fear of the supernatural; he was afraid the supernatural, its ineffability and absolute foreign­ ness, would generate intellectual confusion in the human realm, which he wanted protected at all cost. Conse­ quently, he defined God in the most intellectually re­ spectful terms at his disposal. God becomes Pure Mind or Perfect Concept, existentially neutral and non- providential as far as the human is concerned. Such a "perfect mind" becomes the absolute standard by which everything is judged. We see the effects of this defini­ tion and the subsequent standard in Winters' view of the natural world, the body-soul composite in man, and the "giant movements" working in society at large. Since the natural world, as well as man's own body, does not v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. participate in the reality of the Pure Mind, it was viewed by Winters with some distrust as a possible impediment to man's realizing his moral and intellectual good. Since Winters believed so much of modern society was noted for thoughtlessness, he viewed it suspiciously and recommended detachment and isolation as the means of saving oneself from moral and intellectual contamination. "To the Holy Spirit," a poem written in his late forties, summarizes all themes related to theism and is his most complete statement on the subject. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION In 1947 Yvor Winters brought together and published in a single volume, entitled In Defense of Reason, three books of criticism he had previously published separately. In those books are to be found the major critical state­ ments on which his reputation as a critic is based. They are Primitivism and Decadence (1937), Maule's Curse (1938), and The Anatomy of Nonsense (1943). Earlier, in 1940, he had issued from his own private press a volume he simply called Poemsthis book contains all the poems he wished to save from his previous volumes, to which only a handful of later ones would be added when the book was commercially published by Alan Swallow in 1952.^ In fact, by the time he came to write the Foreword to In Defense of Reason, all but four of the poems that make up his total work had already been written and published. It was consequently a time of summing up; for all practical
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