In Defence of Reason Book

IN DEFENSE OF REASON PRIMITIVISM AND DECADENCE A Study of American Experimental Poetry MAULES CURSE Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism j THE ANATOMY OF NONSENSE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BRIDGE by Hart Crane, or What Are We to Think of Professor X BY Yvor Winters. NOTE MOST OF THE ESSAYS in this volume are reprinted from earlier books From Primitivism and Decadence Arrow Editions, 1937 The Morality of Poetry, The Experimental School, Poetic Convention, Primitivism and Decadence, and The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention from Maules Curse New Direc tions, 1938 Maules Curse, Fenimore Cooper, Herman Mel ville, Edgar Allan Poe, Jones Very and R. W. Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Maules Well from The Anatomy of Nonsense New Directions, 1943 Preliminary Problems, Henry Adams, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, John Crowe Ransom, and Post Scripta. Acknowledgment should be made also to the following mag azines, in which some of this material appeared originally The Hound and Horn, Poetry, American Literature, The American Review, and The Kenyon Review. CONTENTS PAGE A FOREWORD 3 PRIMITIVISM AND DECADENCE A Study of American Experimental Poetry 15 The Morality of Poetry 17 The Experimental Sehool in American Thought 30 Poetic Convention 75 Primitivism and Decadence 90 The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention 103 MAULES CURSE Seven Studies in the History of Ameri can Obscurantism 151 A Foreword 153 Maules Curse, or Hawthorne and the Problem of Allegory 157 Fcnimorc Cooper, or the Ruins of Time 176 Herman Melville, and the Problems of Moral Navi gation 200 Edgar Allan Poe A Crisis in the History of American Obscurantism 234 Jones Very and R. W. Emerson Aspects of New Eng land Mysticism 262 Emily Dickinson and the Limits of Judgment 283 Maules Well, or Henry James and the Relation of Morals to Manners 300 A Brief Selection of the Poems of Jones Very 344 THE ANATOMY OF NONSENSE 359 Preliminary Problems 361 I Icnry Adams, or the Creation of Confusion 374 Wallace Stevens, or the Hedonists Progress 431 T. S. Eliot, or the Illusion of Reaction 460 vii PAGE John Crowe Ransom, or Thunder Without God 502 Post Scripta 556 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BRIDGE by Hart Crane, or What Are We to Think of Professor X 575 INDEX OF AUTHORS MENTIONED 605 vm IN DEFENSE OF REASON A FOREWORD THE ESSAYS NOW REPRINTED in this volume are the work of more than fifteen years. Although this collection, like any collection of essays, suffers from its miscellaneous character, there is a single theory of literature developed throughout and a single theory of the history of literature since the Renaissance. These theories are developed mainly with reference to American litera ture. It may be of some service to the reader if I recapitulate briefly. There have been various ideas regarding the nature and func tion of literature during the twenty-five hundred years or so that literature has been seriously discussed. One might think, off hand, that the possibilities were limitless but they are actually limited and even narrowly limited the ideas are all classifiable under a fairly small number of headings. I shall not attempt an historical survey but shall merely attempt a brief classificatory survey. The theories in question can all be classified, I believe, under three headings the didactic, the hedonistic, and the ro mantic. I am not in sympathy with any of these, but with a fourth, which for lack of a better term I call the moralistic. This concept of literature has not been adequately defined in the past so far as my limited knowledge extends, but I believe that it has been loosely implicit in the inexact theorizing which has led to the most durable judgments in the history of criticism...Read More