Poetry and secularism wallace stevenss "supreme fiction

Abstract

Wallace Stevens offered poetry that he called the "supreme fiction" as a substitute for Christianity. The credibility of the "supreme fiction" as a subject of belief is conditioned by its adherence to reality: abstractness, change and pleasure. Our attempt in this dissertation is to look more closely to Stevens’s "supreme fiction" by analyzing these conditions. The first chapter consists of a historical glimpse of the loss of belief . It also deals with the different reactions of the modernists, including Stevens, to the sense of meaninglessness and aimlessness caused by the loss of belief. In the second chapter, I discuss the idea that the credibility of the "supreme fiction" depends on its adherence to reality where it springs. The third chapter is devoted to abstraction as a condition for the supremacy of the "supreme fiction". Abstraction means the rejection of classical myths, Christianity, Rationalism and Romanticism. The fourth chapter deals with Stevens’s notion of change. Change for Stevens is the power of the mind to transform reality. Change also means the ability of the poet to incessantly make new "supreme fiction". The fifth chapter is an attempt to show whether the pleasure the "supreme fiction" can offer is to the detriment of its commitment. In my conclusion I have tried to sum up the results of my investigation by insisting on the secular character of the "supreme fiction." I also insist on the fact that the " supreme fiction" is an attempt to cover reality with aesthetics to make it bearable rather than to escape it