A defense of poetry : reflections on the occasion of writing
A Defense of Poetry argues that literature can be defined - pragmatist and historicist arguments notwithstanding - and that in its definition its unique value can be discovered. In qualified opposition to the most sophisticated Formalist definitions involving redundancy or economy of expression, the author identifies literature ontologically as a sign of the preconceptual, as the "ostensive moment" that discloses neither the purpose nor the structure of existence but existence itself, revealed in its nonhuman register
Print Book, English, 1995
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1995
Poetry
255 pages ; 23 cm
9780804724524, 9780804725316, 0804724520, 0804725314
31010716
1. Non-construction: History, Structure, and the Ostensive Moment in Literature
2. One Last Theme: Literature as Insignificance
3. The Hum of Literature: Ostension in Language
4. The Torturer's Horse: What Poems See in Pictures
5. Clearings in the Way: Non-epiphany in Wordsworth
6. Nil Reconsidered: Criticism, Actuality, and "To Autumn"
7. Possession of the Sublime, Repression of Insignificance
8. The Absent Dead: Wordsworth, Byron, and the Epitaph
9. Disposing of the Body: The Common Sense of the Romantic Moment of Dying
Conclusion: The Ethics of Suspending Knowledge