Table Of ContentPoetics and the Gift
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Poetics and the Gift
Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida
Adam R. Rosenthal
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
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© Adam R. Rosenthal, 2022
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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The right of Adam R. Rosenthal to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and
Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Preface x
Introduction: ‘Economimesis’ after Given Time, or:
The Return of Helio-Poetics 1
PART I: POETIC DIVINITY AND PATRONAGE
1. Poetic Donation from Homer to Kant 41
2. Symbolic Economies of Poet and Patron 58
3. Patronage and Poetic Election in Wordsworth 83
PART II: BEING AND NAMING
4. Stein and the Concern of Poetry 121
5. Heidegger and the Stiftung der Wahrheit 127
6. Shelley and the Gift of the Name 138
PART III: ECONOMY AND ANECONOMY
7. Emerson and the Flower of Commodities 165
8. Thoreau on Poetic Purchase 178
9. Baudelaire and the Gift of Pleasing 213
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vi poetics and the gift
PART IV: GIVENS
10. Poetry Lost and Found in Howe, Goldsmith, and Philip 245
Conclusion: The Birth of Lyric in The Homeric Hymn to Hermes 265
Appendix: Henry David Thoreau, ‘A Poet Buying a Farm’ 271
Bibliography 272
Index 294
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Figures
10.1 By Susan Howe, from CONCORDANCE, copyright © 2019,
2020 by Susan Howe. Reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corp. 255
10.2 P age 27 of Zong! © 2008 by M. NourbeSe Philip. Published by
Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. 258
10.2 P age 101 of Zong! © 2008 by M. NourbeSe Philip. Published by
Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. 259
A.1 Henry David Thoreau (1852), ‘A Poet Buying a Farm’,
Sartain’s Union Magazine 11: 127. 271
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Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time coming. Along the way, I drew on the gener-
osity of friends and family, colleagues and critics, and even the odd adversary.
Their contributions often took the form of time, but also, on occasion, patience,
attention, instruction, and discipline. Perhaps, now and again, I may even have
taken advantage of their magnanimity. What is certain is that this book was
forged in the give and take of these ties. For that, I am grateful.
Where would I be today without the support of Elissa Marder, Geoffrey
Bennington, Deborah Elise White, and Cathy Caruth, my dissertation commit-
tee? Through the years, they have proven their value on more occasions than
I can recall. My time at Emory University was also shaped by Shoshana Fel-
man, Valéry Loichot, John Lysaker, Andrew J. Mitchell, Erik Butler, Moyukh
Chatterjee, Luke Donahue, Carl Hughes, Christina León, Hannah Markley,
Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús, David Ritchie, Matthew J. Roberts, Taylor Schey,
John Steen, and Rodrigo Therezo. I consider myself fortunate to have grown
up in their presence. I am also particularly thankful to the Departments of
Comparative Literature and French at Emory, which nurtured all of my early
academic endeavours. At Texas A&M, I have been supported by many
colleagues from across the College of Liberal Arts and beyond: Maddalena
Cerrato, Daniel Conway, Robert Griffin, Stefanie Harris, Daniel Humphrey,
Craig Kallendorf, Claire Katz, Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, Vikram Manjunath,
Alberto Moreiras, Robert Shandley, Apostolos Vasilakis, Teresa Vilarós-Soler,
and Michael Portal have each helped me make a home for myself there.
I have been the recipient of extremely liberal and insightful feedback on
this book. No recognition would be sufficient to pay the debts I owe to Branka
Arsić, Emile Bojesen, E. S. Burt, Katie Chenoweth, Thomas Hays, Daniel
Hoffman-Schwartz, Peggy Kamuf, Kir Kuiken, Brian McGrath, Martin
McQuillan, Laliv Melamed, Thomas Clément Mercier, Michael Naas, Nicho-
las Royle, Kas Saghafi, Art Smith, Naomi Waltham Smith, Sergio Villalobos-
Ruminott, and David Wills. I could not have done it without each of you.
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acknowledgements ix
I am also thankful to the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press,
especially Ersev Ersoy, Susannah Butler, and the perceptive anonymous
reviewers who helped turn this project into something more than I could
have hoped for.
Research for this book was supported by a number of sources. The Thoreau
Society funded trips to Concord, Massachusetts, so that I could romp about
in Walden’s hallowed woods. The Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic
Inquiry at Emory University not only provided me with a full year’s support
so that I could complete my dissertation, but also gave me the space in which
to do so and a community from which I could learn. In the final stages of the
project, Texas A&M’s Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research
also provided me with generous funding as well as encouragement, for which
I am extremely thankful. Finally, all of the images used below were expertly
photographed by Bella Kirchner, to whom I am obliged.
With such a theme – with this my argument – of thee, Armando Mastro-
giovanni, shall I be silent? No one has been so constant a star in the progress of
this work, nor been so subject to the numerous iterations it has taken, as you.
For this you shall be remembered.
Which brings me to my family. No part of this book would have been
possible without the contributions of Janie and Eric Rosenthal, my parents
and biggest backers. Over the last decade, Stephen Hannaford and Marion
Faber, along with Rachel and Justin and Zachary and Beatrice, have become
central parts of my life. I am thankful to have known each of you. A special
place, finally, must be reserved for Dinah Hannaford and Charlotte Rosenthal.
I would thank you, make you offerings, and lavish you with presents, if
I didn’t already count you as so many portions of myself. In this respect, to
express gratitude for your daily benefaction would be as senseless as to do so
for my own. What could the left hand give to the right? I can only renounce
such a project and hope that, in doing so, some semblance of the sentiment
is grasped.
A previous version of Chapter 6 was previously published in Studies in Roman-
ticism 55.1.
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Preface
Yet, fellow poets, us it behooves to stand
Bareheaded beneath God’s thunder-storms,
To grasp the Father’s ray, no less, with our own two hands
And, wrapping in song the heavenly gift,
To offer it to the people.
[Doch uns gebührt es, unter Gottes Gewittern,
Ihr Dichter! mit entblößtem Haupte zu stehen,
Des Vaters Stral, ihn selbst, mit eigner Hand
Zu fassen und dem Volk ins Lied
Gehüllt die himmlische Gaabe zu reichen.]
Hölderlin, ‘As on a holiday . . .’1
This book argues that the Western poetic tradition is in need of reappraisal.
An essential element of its form has been under-theorised. From this lack of
attention, what in fact constitute founding and interrelated features of poetry’s
history have been interpreted to be disparate, secondary, and merely contin-
gent. This neglected element, I show, is the gift.
The archive of poetry is littered with gifts. A motley crew of presents,
grants, and benefits, scattered here and there, span both its material history and
its figural self-representations. These gifts have supplied rich material for poets,
critics, and philosophers alike. They have stood as the ground of poetry’s dis-
missal as well as its embrace, its commendation as well as its condemnation. It
is poetry’s status as divine gift, in the Odyssey, that makes it both more and less
than a sellable good for Alcinous and Demodocus, just as it is poetry’s god-
given status, in the Ion and Phaedrus, that convinces Socrates and Plato that it
could not possibly be a learned technē. It is the fact of the poem’s gifting, by
Horace, that makes it so compelling for his patron, Maecenas, while it is the
poet’s exemplary gift of genius, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, that
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