This dissertation explores the social and political dimensions of aesthetic autonomy as it is given formal expression in Wallace Stevens’s poetry of the 1930s and the early 1940s. Whereas modernist claims to autonomy are often said to rest upon an ideological assertion of art’s detachment from socio-historical concerns, I argue that, in Stevens’s work, autonomy is conceived in relational terms, which gives rise to new lines of interconnection between his poetry and its cultural situation. Written over a period when the political efficacy of literature became a staple of discussion among a myriad of writers and critics, Stevens’s poetry offers an understanding of autonomy not as an escape from, but as a productive condition for imagining alternative forms of engagement with the historical crisis with which it has to reckon. In taking into account the cultural context from which Stevens’s poetics of autonomy emerged, my study aims to highlight the significance of the concept to the poet’s exploration of the tension between aesthetic and social domains, to his imaginative formations of collective agency, and to the vexed relationship between poetic and philosophical modes of thinking. By transposing the theoretical discussion of autonomy into the register of historical scrutiny, I hope to pave the way for a rethinking of autonomy and its relevance to the period’s radical and modernist writing, literary debates, and cultural politics. For this purpose, I draw on recent theories, such as those offered by Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, on poetry, politics, and (in)aesthetics, which serve to complicate the working definitions of modernist autonomy as literature’s immunity from the world, and to indicate an alternative path for analyzing its critical and contextual implications.

The thesis is dedicated to the question of relation of Schlegel's conception of the "progressive universal poetry" to the principle of the aesthetic autonomy as the central feature of the modern notion of art. Against the opinion of J. M. Bernstein the point of view is defended, according to which Schlegel's theory doesn't undermine but advances the aesthetic autonomy. The interpretation of romantic philosophy in work of Manfred Frank serves as a base for the argument. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first two of them offer the basic outline of the problem of the aesthetic autonomy as the context in which Schlegel's romantic aesthetic is to be examined. The third and the forth chapters introduce the main elements of this theory. The fifth chapter summarizes Frank's interpretation of the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel. The sixth chapter contains the resume and subsequent challenging of the argument of J. M. Bernstein, who argues that the conception of the "progressive universal poetry" leads to the "philosophical disenfranchisement of art". On the background of its criticism the alternative position is offered, which holds, that Schlegel advances the doctrine of the aesthetic autonomy by replacing the view of an artwork as an actual binding of nature and freedom with the notion of the...

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal investigar o problema da autonomia estética da música instrumental no Romantismo alemão. Através do exame de textos filosóficos, literários e de crítica musical, procuramos investigar a seguinte questão: como foi possível que a arte musical que até o século XVIII era considerada como um objeto indigno para a filosofia e para a estética se estabelecesse como a esfera mais elevada do espírito humano no Romantismo e no Idealismo alemão? A fim de responder a essa pergunta, pareceu-nos necessário levar em conta a maneira pela qual se compreendia a música no século XVIII e qual o conceito de razão que estava em sua base. A principal hipótese que procuramos explorar diz respeito à filosofia crítica de Kant, que permitiu que o pensamento encontrasse um paradigma na música. Com a chamada revolução copernicana, Kant acentuou a subjetividade de maneira radical, abrindo, pela primeira vez, a possibilidade da música ser reconhecida como uma linguagem não-objetiva, que foi desenvolvida principalmente por autores como Wackenroder, Tieck e Hoffmann. Todavia, as condições de possibilidade para a compreensão da música como expressão do inefável, bem como a proximidade que se estabelece entre música e religião, devem ser buscadas primeiramente na filosofia kantiana. / The main purpose of this research is to examine the problem concerning the aesthetic autonomy of instrumental music in German Romanticism. Through the examination of philosophical and literary texts, as well as musical criticism, the following question is investigated: how was it possible that the musical art - which was considered an unworthy object for the philosophy and the aesthetics until the 18th Century - could establish itself as the highest sphere of the human spirit during the Romanticism and the German Idealism? In order to answer to this question, it seems necessary to take into account the way music was understood during the 18th Century and what conception of Reason lay in its basis. Our main hypothesis concerns Kants critical philosophy, which made possible the thought of finding a paradigm in music. With the so called Copernican revolution, Kant stressed subjectivity in a radical way and, for the first time, provided the possibility of recognizing the music as a non-objective language, developed later by authors like Wackenroder, Tieck and Hoffmann. However, the conditions of possibility for the understanding of music as expression of the ineffable, as well as the proximity established between music and religion, must be searched firstly in the Kantian philosophy.

[pt] Pollock, Rauschenberg e Cage. Formas residuais do pictórico na era da reprodução técnica aborda uma trajetória de pequenos colapsos da autonomia do campo pictórico como efeito das mediações da reprodução da imagem, no contexto norte-americano entre o final da década de 1940 e a década de 1950. É uma época caracterizada por dois movimentos fundamentais, que afetam o discurso crítico e a produção artística: o fim da era da mecânica – o cinema é uma máquina modernista – e o início da eletrônica – que inaugura as possibilidades da televisão e do vídeo. Jackson Pollock e Robert Rauschenberg operam nesse momento de transição e, ao longo da tese, são testadas possíveis relações entre, por um lado, certa desagregação do campo pictórico em Pollock e, por outro, a tentativa de reorganização da pintura a partir da integração do índice fotográfico operada por Rauschenberg. Nesse contexto, a figura de John Cage, além de introduzir o primeiro Rauschenberg, é um contraponto interessante a Pollock: por um lado, o compositor torna-se porta-voz das poéticas antiautorais de Marcel Duchamp e da busca por uma suposta transparência das sensações do corpo, que encontra sua matriz na tradição do pensamento zenbudista, por outro, sua poética ainda traz as marcas de certo idealismo. Isso revela um contexto histórico no qual tanto a definição de um campo autônomo da arte quanto a dissolução entre arte e vida tornam-se perspectivas vãs frente à emergência do mercado – da cultura, das imagens, da arte, da moda e dos objetos de consumo –, que atravessa todas as instâncias de produção e recepção da obra. A busca pelo esgarçamento do pictórico nas virtualidades do fotográfico se dará através de referências a temas centrais da filosofia benjaminiana e à teoria do Olhar de Jaques Lacan, autores que colocam certa ênfase no resíduo, na sobra e nas ruínas. / [en] Pollock, Rauschenberg and Cage. Residual Forms of the Pictorial in the Age of Technical Reproduction describes a trajectory of small collapses in the pictorial field in the North American context between the late 1940s and the 1950s. This is an era characterized by two fundamental movements affecting critical discourse and artistic production: the end of the era of mechanics – cinema is a modernist machine – and the transition to the electronic media – television and video. This thesis explores relations between a disaggregation of the pictorial field in Pollock Jackson and Robert Rauschenberg s attempts to reorganize painting based on the integration of the photographic index. John Cage is crucial in this context. If, on the one hand, the composer becomes a spokesman for Marcel Duchamp s antiauthoritarian poetics and the search for a supposed transparency of the sensations of the body, which finds its matrix in the tradition of Zen-Buddhist thought, on the other, his poetics still bears the marks of a certain idealism, revealed by a historical context in which both the definition of an autonomous field of art and the dissolution of art and life become vain perspectives in the face of the emergence of the market – of culture, images, art, fashion and consumer objects –, traversing all instances of production and reception of the work. With references to themes from Benjaminian philosophy and the theory of the Gaze of Jaques Lacan, both emphasizing residues, remains and ruins, we examine the fraying of the pictorial in the virtualities of the photographic.