Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (January 19, 2010) Includes bibliographical references (p. 29)

Thesis (M.A.)--Wisconsin. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.Ed.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Dennis L. Loftus, School of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

The Inadequacy of the image has ever been the besetting problem of idealist esthetics. The discrepancy between the absolute and the contingent, between the thing, the idea of the thing and the experience of the thing provides common cause for the compositions of hermetic art. The basic affirmation of this thesis is that the theory of Wallace Stevens offers a demonstrable solution to the problem and that his relational use of images in The Collected Poems overcomes the inadequacy of those images. In practice, however, this thesis involves the delineation of that solution less than the dialectics necessary to determine its nature. Such a method is dictated by an initial acceptance of deliberate obscuration as one of the formative principles of Stevens' esthetic. The introduction to this paper is little more than an examination of the causes and values of obscuration in Stevens' prose and in his poems and a defence of the method adopted herein to deal with those values; in it, Stevens' poems are viewed as acts appropriate to the practical process of transcendence - a process designed to attain, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, "One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God." The theoretic validity of transcendence as process becomes the onus probandi of "Part I". It constitutes an attempt to appease apparent ambiguities in Stevens' theory of poetry -ambiguities that have plagued critics who would perceive in his poems the principles of his theory - by determining the nature and implications of Stevens' concept of "central poetry." The source, nature, and mode of existence of that concept - used herein as generic name for Stevens' total theory - are characterized by the image of oscillations contained in the thesis title. Basically, the discipline of the "central poet" is analogous to that involved in the via affirmativa and via negativa of religious art, but the phrase 'oscillations of the absolute’ more easily manifests the character of his symbols. The phrase describes both the movement of the mind from involvement in the limitations of images and ideas to free contemplation and the nature of the 'existent images' which become adequate objects for that contemplation. The coupling of oscillations in the image with movements of the mind dictates the kind of study projected in "Part II" of this paper. Therein Stevens' theory is compared to the tenets of symbolism, in terms both of the creation of the individual symbol and of the symbolic work - specifically with Mallarmé's concept of "the Book." The architectonics of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens - the variation and repetition of image, the incorporations of allusion, the progression in the volume from positings of the contingent to existent images of the absolute - are indicated, and the karmic process of the mind as it dramatizes itself in that created architecture is described. Decreation, abstraction, composition, and repetition are treated as the major aspects of the movement of the mind towards the unfettered experience of the absolute. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a concept of the nature of Stevens' poetic that will prove efficacious as a critical approach to his poems. Its validity, therefore, is dependent upon the degree to which the concept herein evolved provides an insight into the experience of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This study examines representations of thinking and consciousness in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. In discussing the processes of thinking in poetry, I have borrowed Ian Fletcher's term "noetics" which "names the field and the precise activity occurring when the poet introduces thought as a discriminable dimension of the form and meaning of the poem" (3-4). I have further sub-divided Fletcher's term into "noetics of form" and "noetics of figure" the first exploring the dominant modes of thinking which the poems imitate, the latter examining the images which are consistently used to represent consciousness and/or processes of thinking. In many ways, this study takes as its premise Stevens' theory of the poetic imagination as either ''marginal" or "central." I explore this theory of poetry in relation to a noetics of form and figure in the poetry of the "marginal"thinking Yeats and the "central" -thinking Stevens in order to consider the idea of consciousness as a container and of poetry as a process of containment. By understanding consciousness as a container of thinking, we come to see that human consciousness-and our ability to think metaphorically-virtually creates reality. This thesis is divided into two sections, "The Noetics of Form" and "The Noetics of Figure". Each section contains two chapters each on the poetry of Yeats and Stevens respectively. In the first section, I argue that the poetry of both Yeats and Stevens imitates a meditative mode of thinking. In Chapter One I explore Yeats's poetry as a dialectical mode of meditation. For Yeats, the process of containment is repeatedly undermined or postponed through an imitation of internal argument. His dialogues imitate an ongoing process of differentiation--a splitting of the objective and the subjective modes of thinking--in a struggle to enact containment through a transcendence or reconciliation of opposing lines of thought. In Chapter Two, I illustrate how Stevens's meditative poetry often imitates a process of thinking which is less determined and more observational than Yeats's. While there is still an implicit split between subjective and objective thought in Stevens' poetry, he more often imitates modes of thinking which recognize the co-dependency of human consciousness and objective reality, resulting in the imagined objective. Section II concerns the Noetics of Figure in the poetry of Yeats and Stevens, examining how their most dominant imagery represents a paradigm of human consciousness. In Chapter Three, I illustrate how Yeats's images suggest transcendence, a movement towards and beyond the margins of consciousness. I ground this discussion in Northrop Frye's view of images of ascent as being connected with an intensifying consciousness. Yeats's figures of mountains, trees, towers, and ladders represent consciousness, while his images of birds represent various forms of thinking within-and in an attempt to transcend--its limits. In Chapter Four, I look at Stevens's images of colour and shape as major noetic figures. These figures represent a movement towards the centre ofhuman consciousness, and a model ofconsciousness as an ever-expanding container of reality. In my concluding chapter, I look at two late poems from each ofthe poets in order to illustrate the contrasts and comparisons between these paradigms ofhuman consciousness. Though both Yeats and Stevens are concerned with a creating and created consciousness, Stevens' noetics offigure provide us with a theory ofpoetry that is a theory oflife, through which we come to see both poets as imitating a process of containment through the act of poetic composition. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis ( M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

This dissertation is about the ways David Foster Wallace's writing expresses Buddhist philosophy. Because Buddhism is a vast subject, sometimes I conflate several traditional "Buddhisms" into a common-denominator form, while other times I investigate Wallace's work through Zen Buddhism specifically. By close-reading his work in chronological order--starting with The Broom of the System, Girl With Curious Hair, "The Empty Plenum," Infinite Jest, "Roger Federer as Religious Experience," "The Suffering Channel," and The Pale King--I analyze the ways in which Wallace's writing focused on questions of the self-awareness of linguistic expression, the contemporary causes of addiction and suffering and their implied remedy, the ethical and moral implications of living out of self-consciousness, the principles of mutual causality, "co-arising" and ecological well-being, and the discernment of multiple forms of awareness, all of which are foundational concerns shared with Buddhist philosophy. / text

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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Memorial University of Newfoundland. / Typescript. Bibliography : leaves 439-445. Also available online.