Creativity, for Wallace Stevens, depends on connections to the natural world which can be examined through garden imagery. Chapters one and two focus on Stevens' private writing, identifying the range of garden environments and natural expanses to which he responded and associating these responses with his aesthetic sensibilities. Continental and Adamic traditions in garden imagery are explored as are contemporary practices in conservation and horticulture. Chapter three concentrates on poems which treat the garden as a locus amoenus of repose and delight where a poet can engage his imaginative faculties with sensual reality. Chapter four analyzes poems whose garden imagery elucidates Stevens' attempts to confront social and political as well as aesthetic issues. Chapters five and six examine Stevens' consideration of the garden as a hortus mentis, emblematic of creative experience, where Stevens assesses the relation of expression to environment and celebrates life lived "in the word of it."
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.72085 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Johnson, Andrea C. (Andrea Carswell) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000420099, proquestno: AAINL38309, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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