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In Quest of Wisdom: Louise Rosenblatt, H.D., and the Transactional Literary Experience

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In Quest of Wisdom: Louise Rosenblatt, H.D., and the Transactional Literary Experience In Quest of Wisdom: Louise Rosenblatt, H.D., and the Transactional Literary Experience Richard Vytniorgu A PhD thesis submitted to De Montfort University Sponsored by Midlands3Cities (Arts and Humanities Research Council) October 2017 i Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ iv Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. vi Introduction: The Personal and the Literary ........................................................................................... 1 Focus on the Personal ......................................................................................................................... 2 Discourses of Selfhood ..................................................................................................................... 13 Pathways to Wisdom ......................................................................................................................... 20 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................... 24 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Definition of Terms ........................................................................................................................... 27 Structure ............................................................................................................................................ 29 1. The Importance of the Individual’s Experience ............................................................................ 31 Towards a Transactional Theory of Experience ............................................................................... 32 Commitment to the Individual .......................................................................................................... 54 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 76 2. Towards a Theory of Personalist Textual Sociability ....................................................................... 78 Personalist Textual Sociability.......................................................................................................... 80 Personalist Textual Sociability in Practice: Case Studies ............................................................... 109 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 125 3. Literary Imagination and the Quest for Personal Connection ......................................................... 127 Literary Imagination ....................................................................................................................... 129 Re-envisioning Human Relations ................................................................................................... 155 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 175 4. Literary Studies and the Quest for Wisdom .................................................................................... 178 Transaction, Transformation, and Quest: Rosenblatt, Greene, Mezirow ........................................ 179 H.D. in Quest .................................................................................................................................. 194 Creating Wisdom in the University: Walsh and Maxwell .............................................................. 210 New Directions for Literature and the Human, Affect, and Ethics ................................................. 217 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 229 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 232 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 242 ii iii Acknowledgements It was during summer 2012 when I was living in Leeds that I first conceived the ideas that grew into this thesis, and since then numerous people have supported and encouraged me. Rosemary Mitchell urged me to continue applying for funding to write this project despite numerous disappointments; her faith in me has helped me enormously. In 2013 I met Andy Mousley, who became my principal supervisor from 2014-16. Andy’s faith in this project never wavered, and I thank him for his warmth and humour. Martin Halliwell has steered the course throughout as my second supervisor and I have come to respect his precision and insight. And to Joe Phelan I owe the thanks that are due to ‘unexpected visitors’ who arrive late in the day and can offer fresh advice and stimulation. Beyond my immediate academic supervisory team, I am indebted to the enthusiasm and interest shown across the Atlantic by Elizabeth Flynn and Gordon Pradl. Gordon has read portions of this thesis in draft form and offered valuable gambits of information as well as generously sharing material from his private papers, while Beth is currently helping me approach publishers. It was through Gordon that in March 2015 I was introduced to some of those in New York who worked with and remembered Louise Rosenblatt – John Rouse and Sondra Perl. Gordon was also there for me during my early days of teaching at the University of Leicester and De Montfort University, when I was trying to integrate some of the ideas of this thesis into my pedagogy. Without the financial assistance of Midlands3Cities and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the duration of my doctoral research this thesis could not have been written. I am additionally thankful for extra funding from these sources to conduct research at Yale, Columbia, and New York Universities, and to present some of this research at iv conferences at Harvard University, KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of Exeter, and Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). Finally, I thank my friends – Becky Cullen, Richard Betts, Bill Travis, Phil Rudden, Helen Kingstone, and Rachel Webster – for simply ‘being there’ for me. Crumpet and Alfonso have also lightened the air at critical moments. My god-father, Nicholas Hale, has kept me sane and provided much-needed refreshment by opening his doors to me in Wiltshire and Spain, and by encouraging me in my recent journeys (back) to Eastern Europe, which have helped me to grow as a person in more ways than I know. But to my Dad, Andrew Whitney, I owe my life (as I always have): his love and support during the difficult times of this PhD journey have been critical. v Abstract This thesis theorises the relationship between the transactional literary experience and the experience of being in quest of wisdom in literary studies. It achieves this by constructing a dialogue between two thinkers deeply concerned with aesthetic experience and personalist modes of learning: the twentieth-century educator and literary theorist, Louise Rosenblatt, and the modernist prose writer and poet, H.D. The ‘transactional literary experience’ is a phrase at the heart of Rosenblatt’s humanistic philosophy, while H.D. is a figure who devoted her life to articulating the personal experience of being in quest. While literary theory in the past twenty years or so has turned its attention to re-exploring the nature of the human, the role of affect, and the centrality of ethics, this thesis contributes to these fields by foregrounding the pedagogical potential at the heart of them. My approach is to adopt a personalist framework for reading H.D. and Rosenblatt as thinkers who intersect productively by drawing upon romantic, modernist, and existential ideas, tropes, and commitments. Embracing Rosenblatt’s entire oeuvre and unpublished materials, and H.D.’s autobiographical and later quest poetry and prose, the thesis models a personalist approach to literary study by actively developing potential connections between the two thinkers. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork by theorising Rosenblatt’s and H.D.’s emphasis on the individual and her experience. Chapter 2 constructs a theory of what I term ‘personalist textual sociability’, which denotes a mode of context building especially suited to the personal nature of the transactional literary experience. Chapter 3 explores the centrality of literary imagination for fostering personal connections across time and space, both within the literary experience, and in the wider world among real people, and the role of the individual who seeks to communicate their vision of human flourishing to others. Finally, Chapter 4 folds the insights of the first three chapters into an exploration of what it means to be in quest of wisdom, where wisdom is characterised as an inherently existential and personal quality. vi vii Introduction: The Personal and the Literary Wisdom is an ancient concept, but also a strangely de-familiarising one
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