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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/4473 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. From 'Suspicion' to 'Affirmation' A study of the role of the imagination andprose rhythm, drawing upon the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, in which there may be movement from suspicion to affirmation of reasonablehope. by Raymond Trevor Shorthouse A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirementsfor the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy September1999 Contents Introduction Page 1 Chapter 1: Presence, Meaning and Metaphor (Part I) Page 11 Chapter 2: Presence, Meaning and Metaphor (Part II) Page 33 Chapter 3: Presence,Sound and Narrative Page60 Chapter4: Prose Rhythm: The Mediation of SonorousBeing Page82 Chapter 5: The Primordial Dialectic and Temporal Perspective Page 113 Chapter 6: Self and Other; Suspicion and Affirmation Page 144 Chapter 7: The Creative Imagination Page 165 Chapter 8: ReasonableHope Page 185 Notes Page207 Bibliography Page254 Appendix Page268 Acknowledgements This thesis has its origin in my childhood, when my father awakeneda love of poetry and literature within me. Many yearslater, as a parish priest in the Church of England, I learnedto appreciatethe rhythms of languagein the Anglican liturgy, and consequentlyto be interestedin their significancein particular modesof language.I am grateful for the privilege of conducting services of worship in many parishesover a period of thirty years, and the opportunities I was given to pursuemy interest, in terms of education,during my time as Adult Education Officer, and then as Director of Christian Studiesin the Dioceseof Derby. Among those who have helped me in my studies, I wish to acknowledgea profound debt of gratitude to my supervisor,Martin Warner, whose patient, constructive criticism and constant encouragementhas made this thesispossible. Also, to my wife, Sylvia, whose love and support remain constantin all that I attempt. Abstract of Thesis The aim of this thesis is to show that a familiar hermeneutical movement from suspicion to affirmation of rational meaning, as a reader reflects on a narrative, is, in part, grounded in the narrative's rhythmic structure which mediates a sonorous condition of being appropriated by the reader. This hermeneuticalprocess involves the readerin appropriatingthe temporal perspective(or the 'implied author's' or Other's viewpoint) which creates a 'space' for reflection in which a provisional conceptual unity is made possible, but subject to continuing movement from suspicionto affirmation. It is shownthat this relationship betweenSelf and Other is dialectical, and mediatedby the textual modesof metaphorand narrative.Particular examplesof poetry and proseare examined,and the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaacin the 'Authorised Version' of the Bible is analyzedin detail in an attemptto show how the reader,imaginatively inhabiting the world of the text, is involved in a process in which there is an 'instant' of letting go Self reflection; and there is affirmation of reasonablehope that the narrative may be rationally understood.In an attemptto addressthe critical issue of validation of rational meaningto show that affirmation may be given reasonablehope, the analogy of juridical legality is examined, particularly with respectto Aristotle's notion of phronesis. The analysisdraws upon the hermeneuticalphilosophy of Paul Ricoeur with particular regard to his theoriesof metaphorand narrative,and the role of the creativeimagination. It also makesuse of Maurice Merleau-Ponty'sunderstanding of the lived body in terms of a dialectical relationship between its material objectivity and its phenomenologicalaspects, especially, with respectto sonorousbeing and corporeal intentionality. From the discipline of literary criticism, Northrop Frye's notion of prose rhythm in his Anatomy of Criticism is employed to identity this key mediatory characteristic. Introduction The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply is what he listens to impressed upon his memory. When the rhythm of a work has seizedhim, he listens to the tales in such a way that the gift of retelling them comesto him all by itself. The Storyteller' in Illuminations, p. 83ff. Walter Benjamin. In his book Oneselfas Another, basedupon his 1968 Gifford Lecturesgiven at the University of Edinburgh,Paul Ricoeur refersto Walter Benjamin'sessay entitled 'The Storyteller' in which he recalls that 'the art of story telling is the art of exchanging experiences'.It is, according to Benjamin, the decline of this art, which he laments,that is manifested in the earliest symptom of the rise of the novel at the beginning of modem times. In contrasting thesetwo art forms, he identifies a significant difference in a confrontation of novel and story in the slogans,'meaning of life' and'moral of the story'. Drawing upon the work of GeorgLukäcs, he claims that the quest of the novelist is to graspthe temporal unity, or'meaning of life'. From the philosophicalperspective of this thesis, Benjamin's view of the decline of storytelling may be seento coincidewith the breakdownand fragmentationof temporal unity and 'meaning of life' of the grand narratives which set the scenefor the storyteller until the beginning of modem times in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies. The art of exchangingexperiences in the craft of writing then becomesin-formed by the quest for the 'meaningof life' around which the narrativemoves. There is an issuehere, according to Benjamin,that the storyteller'takes what he tells from experience', whereas the novelist is a solitary individual who carries 'the incommensurableto extremesin the representationof human life. ' The issue may be looked at in terms of the relationshipbetween fantasy and reality in the art of creativewriting. It is an issue of particular importancewith respectto the role played by the novel and other forms of narrative in the questfor the affirmation of the meaningof life in a continuing processof interpretation of experienceagainst an openhorizon of infinite possibilities of meaning.That is, affirmation with This issue be in the unconstrained questioning and explanations . will taken up analysis developedin this thesis. The aim of this thesisis to focus upon what may be discernedas a common element in the oral tradition of storytelling and written narratives. The above quotation relates the significance, according to Benjamin, of 'the rhythm of a work' in relation to memory and the retelling of stories. It is in the ability to listen to the story in terms of self-forgetfulness and being seized by a deep rhythm that the storyteller is able to memorize and consequentlydevelop the art of exchangingexperiences. It may be understoodas a rhythm of the listener's stateof being as he or sheactively respondsto the story in an imaginative graspin a moment of self-forgetfulness. There is a profound rhythmic resonancewhereby the listener's memory is imprinted with the experienceof the story. Analogously,the readermay be understoodto be rhythmically disturbed in relation to the text. In this sense,the written text may be consideredanalogous to the memory of the storyteller. That is, the ontological rhythm is mediated by the rhythmic structure and patternsof the text. To this end, the particular aim of this thesis is to develop a notion of prose rhythm which is taken from Northrop Frye'sAnatomy of Criticism. In developingthe analysiswith respectto this notion, the purposeis to show that prose rhythm is the mediation of an ontological foundation of what will be called sonorous being by which there may be an affirmation of temporal unity and 'meaningof life' in relation to unconstrained questioningand provisional explanations.In Ricoeur'sterms, an affirmation of meaningfounded upon an affirmation of the reader'sself-identity within a processof a'hermeneuticsof suspicion'. For this reason, the purpose of the analysis may be seen to relate to the view that written 2 narrativesmay play a significant role in the affirmation of self-identity in the continuing process of interpreting and sharing experiencesin the contemporary world of fragmentation and dissemination. It is an analysis set within a hermeneuticalphilosophical perspectivedrawing upon the work of Paul Ricoeur. The aim of the first three chaptersis to analyzethe poetic/narrativemode of the text, in contrast to the rational, discursive mode, drawing upon Ricoeur'stheories of metaphor and narrative as a basis, in the following chapters,for identifying prose rhythm as a key characteristic of the objective natureof the text. To show that it is not simply the rhythms of intonation and emphasis of individual readersbut the structuralstress patterns that are intrinsically part of the text. To this end, the analysisin theseinitial chaptersbegins to addressthe problematicof unity with respect to the notion of'presence' in order to identify the fundamentalrole played by sound in relation to image, and developed in later chapters as prose rhythm, with respect to metaphor and narrative. The examination of the notion of 'presence' in the phenomenological and ontological philosophies

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