Sensory Imagery and Aesthetic Affect in the Poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot
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UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 2009 Sensory imagery and aesthetic affect in the poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot Clare Louis Gerlach University of Nevada Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Repository Citation Gerlach, Clare Louis, "Sensory imagery and aesthetic affect in the poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot" (2009). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 80. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/1377188 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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SENSORY IMAGERY AND AESTHETIC AFFECT IN THE POETRY OF KEATS, HOPKINS, AND ELIOT by Clare Louis Gerlach Bachelor of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2001 Master of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2003 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas December 2009 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by Clare Louis Gerlach entitled Sensory Imagery and Aesthetic Affect in the Poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy English V. Nicholas LoLordo, Committee Chair Megan Becker-Leckrone, Committee Member Denise Tillery, Committee Member Vernon Hodge, Graduate Faculty Representative Ronald Smith, Ph. D., Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate College December 2009 ii ABSTRACT Sensory Imagery and Aesthetic Affect in the Poetry of Keats, Hopkins, and Eliot by Clare Louis Gerlach Dr. V. Nicholas LoLordo, Examination Committee Chair Assistant Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas This dissertation focuses on applying a new method of analyis to selected works by three major poets, John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot. The project considers their work in light of recent scholarship by Charles Altieri on the affects, such as emotion, feelings, passion, and mood; how these affects operate in artistic works; and, specifically, examines how these authors employ the affects in their poetry to express their own emotions and, in the creation of lyric poems, turn these emotions into works of art. In addition, the project strengthens the aesthetic readings with a study of the ways in which these poets employ sensory images to achieve a desired affect. Through sensory imagery, the poet avoids direct representation of affect in his poetry, thus making the work subtler and nuances. By merging a reading for affects with a reading for sensory imagery and sensations, I am able to describe the dominant affective modes of example poems, and to elucidate the poetic language of the senses achieves that affect. The introduction presents the concepts of the various affects, as explained by literary critic, Charles Altieri. It argues that this framework of the affects can be valuable in poetic analysis, and is expandable to include other affects, and subcategories of the affects, as close reading of the poetry identifies new emotional vistas. I begin with the poetry and critical writing (mainly letters) of John Keats, whose philosophy of poetry was iii a harbinger of later writers including Eliot. Like Keats, Eliot will accentuate the detachment of the poet, and the difference between feelings and emotions. Like Keats, Hopkins will express a type of detachment – his, slightly different, as it is a separation from the worldly and an escape to the supernatural. Like Hopkins, Eliot will present poetry that is deeply religious, but will add an element of political comment not present in the earlier writers. By selecting poets from the three major literary periods of the long nineteenth century, I provide ample spectrum for the demonstration of my method. Chapters on Gerard Manley Hopkins and T. S. Eliot follow the chapter on Keats, and in them I apply the methodology of sensory imagery and affect to poets of differing backgrounds. Each chapter will include a philosophical analysis followed by close reading of selected works. In Keats, I will locate a tension between the key concepts of fancy and imagination, remarking on Keats’s separation from the wisdom of his contemporary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on these interpretations of the two major processes of poetic creativity. The Keats works analyzed include “Sleep and Poetry,” Endymion , and “Ode to a Nightingale.” In explicating the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, I will establish how his conversion to Catholicism, and subsequent ordination as a Jesuit, affected his poetic style, in turn creating for him a new affective space, which I call religious fervor. The Hopkins poetry analyzed includes “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” and “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves.” I will argue that, even in the so-called “desolate sonnets” of 1885, Hopkins remained a poet of religious fervor, not doubt. Reference will be made to J. Hillis Miller’s synoptic survey of the place of religion in nineteenth century artistic works, The Disappearance of God . The poetry of T. S. Eliot will be analyzed in an in-depth consideration of the very late poem, “Little Gidding,” the iv final of the Four Quartets . The dominant affect of that poem, composed during the Second World War, is mood, the least subjective and the most passive of the affects, as adumbrated by Altieri. The passivity of “Little Gidding” is the key to understanding the affective plight of noncombatants in World War II; it is also the key to the poem’s success. In all of the chapters, attention will be given to the use of sensory imagery. This work began as an interest in synaesthesia, especially in the work of Keats, but has been expanded to include the perspective of recent scholarship by Susan Stewart ( Poetry and the Fate of the Senses ), and Rei Terada ( Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject” ). The interaction between the way sensory perception is presented and the affective stance of the poetry varies from poet to poet. Keats, for example, often uses a negation of the senses to establish emotional distance, yet stresses the intensity of natural and artistic feelings. Hopkins, reflecting the religious practice of the Jesuits set forth by St. Ignatius Loyola, often sacrifices the senses as worldly and seeks a loftier supernatural affective stance in “The Habit of Perfection,” in which each of the senses is subjugated to only spiritual, not sensory, input. Eliot, while seemingly focused on a specific place (Little Gidding, a historical religious enclave from the seventeenth century), and time (World War II), employs vague images which give the poem a moodlike affect, one easily relevant to other places and other times. Eliot’s emphasis of the helplessness of the plight of England in World War II adds a political perspective to an otherwise deeply reflective and philosophical poem. My conclusion highlights the ways in which these poets each construct a complex of thoughts and affects to successfully express truths that were relevant at the time of v writing, and add to the historical writing available to the next generation. Their successful employment of sensory imagery makes their work suitable for analysis via the aesthetics of the affects. Reading for sensory imagery and sensation combined with reading for the affects is a powerful new way of interpreting poetry, and one which should prove helpful in explication poetry of other poets and other eras as well. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Dr. V. Nicholas LoLordo, for his ideas, patience, and interest, and especially for guiding me to the work of Charles Altieri, which has been fundamental to my work here. Thanks also to committee members, Dr. Megan Becker-Leckrone, Dr. Denise Tillery, Dr. Vernon Hodge, and Dr. Kathy Robins, for their reading of, and comments on, this dissertation. Thanks to my friend and colleague, Dr. Heather Lusty, who provided technical support. Finally, thanks to my husband, Dr. Robert Gerlach, whose intellectual and emotional support made this effort enjoyable in my personal, as well as professional, life. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….....vii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Demonstration of Reading for Affect ......................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1 KEATS: FANCY, FEELINGS, AND IMAGINATION ........................... 29 “Sleep and Poetry” .....................................................................................................