The Pragmatic Challenge to Subjectivity in Frost and Stevens Christopher Findeisen

Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2008 Tell Me Something I Don't Know (If You Can): The Pragmatic Challenge to Subjectivity in Frost and Stevens Christopher Findeisen Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW (IF YOU CAN): THE PRAGMATIC CHALLENGE TO SUBJECTIVITY IN FROST AND STEVENS By CHRISTOPHER FINDEISEN A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008 Copyright © 2008 Christopher Findeisen All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Chris Findeisen defended on April 7, 2008. _______________________________ Andrew Epstein Professor Directing Thesis _______________________________ RM Berry Committee Member _______________________________ Tim Parrish Committee Member Approved: _______________________________ Ralph Berry Chair, Department of English The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii For my grandparents, who have always believed in me. For my mother, who helped me believe in other worlds. And for Diane Lee, who kept me believing in this one. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Given the nature of this study, it’s fitting that I should clear a place to acknowledge the influence of other people. My thanks to Dr. RM Berry, Dr. Tim Parrish, and most of all to Dr. Andrew Epstein for all they’ve contributed toward the production of this document. Their insights have proven to be invaluable. I’d also like to thank Dr. Ann Mikkelsen for introducing me to this thing called “pragmatism,” and for her patience during the early days when I did not believe a word of it. I acknowledge my peers and colleagues — especially Toby McCall, Colin Lessig, Dustin Atkinson, and Fayaz Kabani. I hear their voices often, and consider myself to be a product of their encouragement. To that end, I also acknowledge Brianna Noll for her love and support, and for her willingness to harmonize her voice with my own. Special thanks to those to whom this work is dedicated. I would be nothing without them. And you, dear reader. I acknowledge you for inviting these words and this voice into the corridors of your mind. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract......................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................7 1. ‘NOW AM I FREE TO BE POETICAL?’: THE PRAGMATIC CHALLENGE TO ASSUMED SUBJECTIVITY......................................................................5 2. ‘THE READER BECAME THE BOOK’: WALLACE STEVENS AND THE EXPERIENCED VOICE OF THE WORLD...................................................25 3. POETIC PEDAGOGY: ROBERT FROST’S PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO EDUCATION.......................................................................................39 CONCLUSION...........................................................................................57 APPENDIX................................................................................................60 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………….......61 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.........................................................................64 v ABSTRACT Enlightenment institutions dominate our cultural landscape. Perhaps no idea is as problematic as the belief in “Cartesian dualism” — the separation between mind and body, interior and exterior, subject and object. Since Descartes, philosophers and literary critics have been trying to reconcile that dichotomous relationship in order to create strong epistemological models of subjectivity. This thesis explores the ways in which pragmatism allows modern poets like Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens to challenge the notion of Cartesian subjectivity. By encouraging their readers to dissolve the subject/object distinction, these poets attempt to bridge the subjectivity gap between independent minds. As these disembodied voices manifest themselves in our consciousness — appearing in the one place they don’t belong — they challenge our notion of epistemological independence and enable us to enact a more social-self. vi INTRODUCTION I. Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones: But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones. II. We milk the cow of the world, and as we do We whisper in her ear, “You are not true.” --Richard Wilbur, “Epistemology” I’ll start with an anecdote: The phrase “yin and yang” has long been understood as the linguistic symbol for a black and white circular mark dissected by an s-shaped line. We typically use the sign and its signifier as short-hand for the idea of harmonic balance achieved between two things. For example, one might say the poetry of Yankee sage Robert Frost and high-modern aesthete Wallace Stevens “are like yin and yang.” But this is a misnomer. Grammatically, it supposes the very thing that it attempts to deny. The word “and” creates a separation between two parts — yin in addition to yang; yang as distinct from yin. A concept like yin/yang is useful because it shows us that experience is in constant flux, unable to be separated without destroying the very unity that constitutes its identity. In short, yin/yang has never been something that needed to be conjoined. I begin my examination of pragmatic subjectivity with this anecdote because I find it to be helpful in two ways. First, my explication of the yin/yang misnomer is representative of how our most deeply engrained notions of subjectivity are similarly affected by the grammatical conventions of our language. Second, anecdotes, like modern poems, are meant to an inclusive public discourse, available to a broad audience. Both these ideas are central to the pragmatic reconception of subjectivity and this study. One of pragmatism’s primary concerns is with language and how its expression affects the way we understand the world. In his landmark collection Consequences of Pragmatism, Richard Rorty summarizes the significant contribution modern thinkers have made toward approaching Enlightenment problems. He recognizes “how hopeless the traditional problems are — how they are based on a terminology which is as if designed expressly for the purpose of making solution impossible, how the questions which generate the traditional problems cannot be posed except in this terminology, how pathetic it is to think that the old gaps will be closed by constructing new gimmicks” (34). One such “traditional problem” that plagued philosophers since Descartes is the subject/object divide: how is it possible for a subject (experiencer) and an object (experienced) to make meaningful contact with one another? How can a non-material entity (like a mind) interact with a material object except in a physical way? Questions such as these — though they form the foundation of academic philosophy — posed no threat to the pragmatist’s sense of self or experience, since pragmatists “did not attempt to provide better answers to traditional problems (the ‘enduring problems’ of so many introductory philosophy texts) as much as they sought to dissolve, dismiss, and undercut these problems altogether by denying the metaphysical assumptions” (Stuhr 3). By circumventing Cartesian dualism, pragmatist literature explored the realms of epistemology, subjectivity, and sociality with a exhilarating new energy. Their ideological shift generated linguistic formulations that challenged readers to create meaning using the complex web of social relations that comprise our self-conception. Along those lines, it should go without saying that modern poetic discourse should be viewed as an inclusive social practice rather than the commodity of an intellectual elite. Andrew Epstein reminds us that pragmatists think “human creativity, intellect, and discovery[…] are conceived of as fields of continuous, contentious dialogue rather than solitary activities that are accomplished in a vacuum and then considered complete” (69). These writers knew that poetic activity expressed a system of ongoing social relations, and that reading poems was akin to experiencing those relations. Frank Lentricchia draws such a parallel between literature and anecdotes as they relate to the cultural power of story-telling. He notes how the “anecdotalist is therefore necessarily a deliberately cryptic teacher; he knows that what he wants he can’t achieve alone; his largest hope is to engender an engaged readership whose cohesion will lie in a common commitment to a social project and the sustaining of the life therein” (Ariel 5). When Lentricchia stresses the “cohesion” between writer and audience, he’s also implicitly making a case for radical empiricism and pragmatic subjectivity. Modern poems are often rich constructions of cultural capital that elicit, with dizzying variation, the experience of overcoming 8 the very isolation that supposedly defines them. If we perceive these poems to be abstract and esoteric, that is only because we misunderstand them as autonomous objects independent of ourselves. And so it is with a sense pragmatic optimism that this analysis attempts to provoke its readers into experiencing a new relationship with the authors discussed. I make a number of assumptions along the way, and my first and most important is an identification of Frost and Stevens as pragmatists. Though one

Load more