Wallace Stevens and the Apocalyptic Mode

277 Pages·2005·1.29 MB·English

by  Malcolm Woodland

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Wallace Stevens
and the Apocalyptic Mode
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 
Wallace Stevens
and the Apocalyptic Mode
 
University of Iowa Press
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University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodland, Malcolm, –.
Wallace Stevens and the apocalyptic mode / by Malcolm Woodland.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
 --- (cloth)
. Stevens, Wallace, –—Criticism and interpretation. . Literature and
history—United States—History—th century. . Stevens, Wallace, –—
Knowledge—History. . Apocalyptic literature—History and criticism. . End
of the world in literature. . War in literature. I. Title.
. 
'.—dc 
         
C
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For my mother, and in memory of my father
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Abbreviations xix
       
 
. Past Apocalypse: Stevens, History, Theory

.An Ever-Enlarging Incoherence: War, Modernisms,

and Masculinities

. What Could Not Be Shaken: Meditation in a

Time of War
        

. The Refuge That the End Creates: Pastoral and

Apocalyptic Modes in “Credences of Summer”

. Mournful Making: Apocalypse and Elegy in

“The Auroras of Autumn”
    

. Past Apocalypse, Past Stevens: Jorie Graham’s

The Errancy

Afterword: Ending with Strand and Ashbery

Notes

Bibliography

Index
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Eleanor Cook, whose support and encourage-
ment from the early stages of this project have been invaluable. I owe
a similar debt of gratitude to John Reibetanz and Linda Munk.
I would also like to thank Professors Linda Hutcheon and Marlene
Goldman, both of the University of Toronto, who both have read
portions of the manuscript. Research assistants Rob Mancini and
Zachariah Pickard have helped immensely in casting their cold eyes
on a manuscript that has at times been much in need of proof-
reading. Financial assistance from the University ofToronto and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has
facilitated much of the work on this project. Finally, I would like to
thank Prasenjit Gupta, Holly Carver, John Mulvihill, and all others
involved at the University of Iowa Press for their support of and work
on this project.
Excerpts from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace
 
Stevens. Copyright © by Wallace Stevens and renewed by
Holly Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a divi-
sion of Random House, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts from Letters of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens. Copy-

right © by Holly Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd.
,
Excerpts from Selected Poems by Mark Strand. Copyright ©

by Mark Strand. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc.
, ,
Excerpts from A Wave by John Ashbery. Copyright ©
 
, by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission of Georges
Borchardt, Inc., for the author, by the Noonday Press, a division of
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, and Carcanet Press Ltd.

Excerpts from The End of Beauty by Jorie Graham. Copyright ©
by Jorie Graham. Reprinted by permission of the Ecco Press.