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https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Saying the Unsayable: Language and the Tension of the World in the Late Poetry of Robert Penn Warren John Carden Van Dyke Work Completed in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Within The Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology in the Faculty of Divinity Submitted to University of Glasgow June 1997 C\John C. Van Dyke, 1997 ProQuest Number: 10392562 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10392562 Published by ProQuest LLO (2017). C o pyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 'LI.-, -ny 1 A b s t r a c t This thesis explores the turn in Robert Penn Warren's later poetry toward the problematic nature of language which he discerned in the unresolvable tension between the "sayable" and the "unsayable." War ren's struggle within this tension of language is not formulated in a clearly defined philosophy or theory; rather it is conceived through his attention to poiesls, to the act of poetic creation itself. Warren con ceives of language as fallen, fractured, and sometimes arbitrary, but he also envisions a power within this limitation by which language enacts and actuates those things which may not be spoken. This concern for language is shaped to a large extent by his understanding through Coler idge of the role of the imagination and is evidenced by his attention in this later poetry to the voice of the world and to the act of naming. The poet, in Warren's word, "yearns" for the moment of articulation which both acknowledges the boundaries of the sayable and is empowered by the absent presence of the unsayable. The poet's quest after the unsayable is open-ended; thus, we find a poetry which resists closure and totalization through an on-going questioning of what it means to dwell in the world. By tracing out the development of this line of thought from War ren's 1946 essay on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "A Poem of Pure Imaginations An Experiment in Reading," through his 1969 poem, Audubon: A Vision, and in his subsequent poetry and criticism, it is argued that Warren's increased attention to language as both the problem and the power within the act of poetic creation discloses a subtle but discern ible shift out of a modernist critical paradigm in which language is the tool of the poet and toward a more postmodern conception of language as the endless play of difference.,- Furthermore, by reading warren within a certain heritage of thought tha^ runs from Coleridge through Kierkegaard and Heidegger, it is claimed that Warren's poetry both anticipates cer tain emphases in postmodern thought and contributes toward the possibil ity of theological articulation within the postmodern condition. Table of Contents Abstract Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter One Language as the Matter Itself 1 1.1 Warren and the End of Modernism 6 1.2 Warren and the Postmodern 17 1.3 The Critical Silence 25 1.4 The Persistence of Warren's Poetry 38 Chapter Two Warren, Coleridge, and the Search for Language 41 2.1 Critical Introductions 41 2.2 Warren and The Ancient Mariner 49 2.3 The Imagination as Living Power 52 2.4 Language as Living Words 58 2.5 Coleridge and the Symbol 72 2.6 The Logos as Essential Language 77 2.7 Truth and Poetry 81 Chapter Three The Mariner and the Hunter: Audubon as a Poem of Pure Imagination 89 3.1 Some Critical Distinctions 94 3.2 The Poet and the Agony of Words 101 3.3 The Sacramental vision 114 3.3.1 Slayer of Birds, Slayer of Self 115 3.3.2 Dream and Blessing 121 3.4 Language and Nature 129 3.5 Epigraph 133 Chapter Four The Unrolled Yet Glorious Fragment: Participation, Tension, and the Language of the World 137 4.1 Tension and Meaning 142 4.2 The Phenomena of Language in the World 150 4.3 The Withholding of Language 155 4.4 The Giving of Language 169 4.5 Grasping the Paradox 179 Chapter Five "Tell Me the Name of the World": Naming the Unnameable 182 5.1 Naming as Act 187 5.2 The Name of the World 193 5.3 The Name of the Self 216 5.4 Conclusions 230 Chapter Six Warren as Witness to the Unpresentable 233 6.1 The Postmodernity of Warren 233 6.2 "Three Darknesses" and the Imaginative Regress 243 6.3 "Mortal Limit" and the Boundary of the Boundless 248 6.4 The Whole Question of Language 253 6.5 "Myth of Mountain Sunrise" and the Agony of the Poet 258 6.6 Wrestling with the Angel 268 Postscript 272 Bibliography 219 Acknowledgements I want to thank Dr. David Jasper of the Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology at the University of Glasgow not only for his wise and consistent supervision of this project but also for his patient encouragement since I first learned of this program in the summer of 1987. I have benefited greatly from both his thorough scholarship and his pedagogical style. I am also deeply grateful to Dr. Stephen Foun tain, former Deputy Director of the Centre, and to Dr. Kiyoshi Tsuchiya, current Deputy Director, for their helpful insights and support at vari ous points during my work. Among my fellow students in the Seminar on Literature and Theology, Dr. Andrew Hass and Benedict Ushedo both have listened and have been willing to offer criticism throughout my research. I would also like to thank the Department of Theology and Religi ous Studies in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Glasgow, for their support and for funding provided for research in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and travel to present a paper on Robert Penn Warren at the April 1997 meeting of the Robert Penn Warren Circle in Bowling Green, Ken tucky. I also want to acknowledge the debt I owe to the First Presbyte rian Church of Rome, Georgia, and to Mrs. Armin Maier not simply for their financial support but for their prayerful concern for our welfare while in Scotland. We have also been profoundly encouraged by our many friends in St. George's - Tron and Balshagray - Victoria Park Churches here in Glasgow. They have contributed a rare richness to our experi ence which has often sustained me in the midst of my work. It is no exaggeration to say that this period of research would not have been possible apart from the support of my parents, James and Rosemary Van Dyke. I owe to them a debt of gratitude I fear I will never be able to repay. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Lisa, for her tireless patience, perseverance, inspiration, and love. You have hoped for me when I could not hope for myself. This work is dedicated to you, in whose voice I have heard the echo of my own: "Soil Deo Gloria 1" List of Abbreviations Note; After the first reference to the following, each will be abbreviated in notes and references. A Audubon : A Vision AE Altitudes and Extensions 1980-1984 APIM A Plea in Mitigation: Modern Poetry and the End of an Era "APPI' "A Poem of Pure Imagination: An Experiment in Reading" BD 53 Brother to Dragons (1953 Version) BD 79 Brother to Dragons (1979 Version) BH Being Here: Poetry 2977-1980 CC The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge DP Democracy and Poetry KR Kenyon Review LSUP Louisiana State University Press MHQL Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature MQ Mississippi Quarterly NSE New and Selected Essays NSP New and Selected Poems: 1923-1985 NT Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978 OE Or Else - Poem/Poems 1968-1974 RV Rumor Verified: Poems 1979-1980 SE Selected Essays SoR Southern Review SF Selected Poems: 1923-1975 SPNO Selected Poems: New and Old 1923-1966 SR Sewanee Review The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever. Deuteronomy 29:29 He went like one that hath been stunned And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man. He rose the morrow morn. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Lines 622—25 Chapter One Language as "The Matter Itself Robert Penn Warren's later poetry discloses an increasing under standing that the fundamental problem and power of poetry both lie within the limits and limitations of language.