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Chapter 11 - Cognitive Literary Studies

from Part II - Recent Critical Methods Applied to Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

By
G. Gabrielle Starr
Edited by
Bart Eeckhout  and
Gül Bilge Han
Bart Eeckhout
Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Gül Bilge Han
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

In recent years, the poetry of Wallace Stevens has begun to attract the attention of scholars in cognitive literary studies as well. Starr’s chapter offers a cognitive analysis of two aesthetic modes in Stevens’s poetry. The first of these is disruption, in which Stevens violates metrical expectations or creates perceptual or cognitive disorientation. The second involves the manipulation of pleasure (either that represented in the poem or that which might be generated in readers) to call attention to formal features of a poem, and at times to help new formal features emerge from a disorderly formal background.

Keywords

Wallace Stevenscognitive literary studiesimagerymeterexpectation violationformpleasuregenre
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Wallace Stevens Studies , pp. 148 - 158
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

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