Hass, Andrew Wilfred (1996) Poetics and the philosophy of reflection: with particular attention to W.H. Auden's The sea and the mirror as it reflects back to its predecessors and forward to postmodernism. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3530/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis 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. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] POETICS AND THE PlllLOSOPHY OF REFLECTION: With Particular Attention to W.K Auden's The Sea and the Mirror as It Reflects Back to Its Predecessors and Fonvard to Postmodernism by Andrew Wilfred Hass A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology Faculty of Divinity University of Glasgow May 1996 © Andrew W. Hass STATEMENT OF COPYRIGHT The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent, and information from it should be acknowledged. I I Abstract This thesis examines how a poetics may emerge from both the possibilities and the limits peculiar to the metaphor of the mirror and the concept of reflection. Working from a particular history of Western ideas that moves from Plato through to postmodernism, the examination focuses on W.H. Auden, whose treatment and utilization of reflection within The Sea and the Mirror, a long and variegated poem and commentary upon Shakespeare's late play The Tempest, act as a template for an expanded notion of poetics. It is argued that this poetics affirms the creative process by a breaking down of the borders between reflection and what is being reflected, thereby necessitating a reinscribing of those borders self-reflexively and ironically, and in tum necessitating a reevaluation of the respective tasks and boundaries of philosopher, artist and theologian. As suggested by Auden and The Sea and the Mirror, this poetics draws upon texts from a variety of historical periods and a variety of theoretical disciplines. The texts investigated in this thesis include: the "text" of a certain history of ideas defmed as the philosophy of reflection; Shakespeare's The Tempest; Robert Browning's Caliban Upon Setebos; Auden's later poem Friday's Child as well as many of his critical writings; and the theoretical notions and theologies of such contemporary thinkers as Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida as they themselves interact with the texts of the Bible, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and many other thinkers who have been critical of the West's metaphysical and onto-theological traditions. The bringing together of such texts is meant to show that, upon a continual reinvention of previous texts, the distinctions between an original and a copy, a poem and a commentary, or imaginative and theoretical discourse, begin to blur, and that the resulting negations and recreations, as variously represented by the figure of the "0", mark out a new inclusive arena for philosophy, art and theology. It is argued that this circular arena or stage does not, however, preclude the possibility of a "Wholly Other", but that, in line with the traditlolJ;,~~~5lIive theology, any theology seeking an non-idolatrous notion of GOd'"fWil1:.IJtq;lnd upon a doctrine of creation l~ ~ .... -'. as suggested by Auden, where reverential silence is reached through the ironies and inversions of conscious artifice as a "rite". In this sense, it is thus suggested that any philosophy or art probing the paradoxes and fissures of its own mirror­ like creations necessarily opens up new theological possibilities. Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 1 33 Chapter 2 89 Chapter 3 117 Chapter 4 178 Chapter 5 198 Conclusion 232 Bibliography 238 1 Preface A thesis such as this, which purposely sets out to cross boundaries and disciplines, requires not only a certain approach to its composition, but also a certain approach to its reading. A thesis, as its etymology suggests, ought to propose and to place a particular argument. But when the particular argument itself questions the very notion of proposition and placement, at least in the accustomed understanding of these terms within academia, the resulting displacements can make reading a difficult, if not a disorienting, task. Of course, in a curious self-referentiality, this thesis will somehow have to account for its strangeness and departure from the norm, will have to justify its border-crossing, and it is the intention and the attempt of the following argument, by the time it has run its modest course, to have offered just such a justification for its unconventional modus operandi. But the reading of it will nevertheless demand a certain willingness to allow various critical approaches not simply to overlap their fields but in doing so to redefme or reconstitute those fields, so that, for example, the field of philosophy and the logic of discursive reasoning would become redefmed or reconstituted by the field of poetry and the methods of poetic analysis, and vice versa. This is to say, that by crossing such disciplines i. as philosophy, poetry and theology, one necessarily requires a new strategy to follow, as it were, the line of argument, a line reconstituted enough that, indeed, linearity may no longer be the best term for its description. And an alternative model is offered in the course of this argument, a circular model, whose procedure, if followed, would alter the entire concept of circumlocution or the "circular argument". But whatever the model, the reader will see, it is hoped, that the required or resulting new strategy is, in the end, precisely what is being argued for in the term poetics. As the unwieldy title of the thesis tries to show, the argument brings together the notions of poetics and postmodernism within the contexts of a particular philosophical discourse and history, reflection, and a particular poet and his poetry, W.H. Auden and chiefly, but not restricted to, The Sea and the 11 Mirror. The two outside tenns, "poetics" and "postmodemism", the two which have most compelled the writing of this thesis, are the more amorphous of the tenns, for there is little consensus as to exactly where their boundaries should lie: is "poetics" a category, a method, or a theory?; is "postmodernism" an academic theory, a cultural condition, or a historical label? There is of course no shortage of published material claiming to offer definitions for these tenns, particularly in recent times. One salient and important example is Linda Hutcheon's A Poetics of Postmodernism, which deals extensively with contemporary texts of fiction and their common strategy of problematizing "historical knowledge, subjectivity, narrativity, reference, textuality, [and] discursive content". 1 Although this present thesis owes much to works like Hutcheon's, as they have laid significant groundwork for approaching the broad and sometimes intimidating topics both of "poetics" and of "postmodernism", it shares very different aims. Hutcheon for example, working largely within literary criticism, seeks to offer a description of both postmodem theory and postmodem practice, a description which very much conflates "theory" and "practice".2 While this thesis too admits a conflation of "theory" and "practice", it also attempts a conflation of "description" and "prescription", so that though it argues within a certain time line and for a certain history of ideas both of which have contributed to "the way things are now", it also attempts to enact, or at very least to suggest possibilities for, a new mode of operating. In this sense, the thesis is as much philosophy and as much theology, the two disciplines or discourses within the humanities which have most legitimized a posture towards the future, as it is literary or any other kind of descriptive "criticism". The thesis thus purposely stays away from compiling and citing all the latest definitions, theories and summations of the tenns "poetics" and "postmodemism", and instead seeks to work out a definition, literally and figuratively, from what might emerge out of not simply one discipline or one historical epoch, but a necessary convergence of many. 1 Linda Hutcheon, The Poetics of Postmodemism (London: Routledge, 1988), 231. 2 Ibid., 14ff. 111 The terms of the title which come between "poetics" and "postmodemism" are more confmed in nature, and thus lend themselves to a more specific treatment. The philosophy of reflection, which takes up the lengthy Chapter 1, is a particular, admittedly selective reading of how a certain metaphor has functioned within the history of Western, largely philosophical thought. The reading does not pretend to cover all angles of reflection within the large scope of time covered, nor all angles within each thinker presented, but it does intend to shed light on the immense importance, influence, or one might even say sovereignty that one metaphor has held over a vast period and in a variety of conceptual frameworks. Like all history of ideas, its narrative will be misleading, for there is always a myriad of complications and intricacies left unsaid that can radically alter the picture one way or the other. But it is hoped that the narrative will be seen for what it is, a necessary construction contributing to an overall sense of poetics. The figure of W.H. Auden is an important and integral part of the thesis· strategy.