Musical aesthetics in the poetry of T.S eliot and wallace stevens

Abstract

This study demonstrates Eliot’s and Stevens’ use of musical aesthetics in poetry.Previous critics demonstrated to an extent the interdisciplinary experimental musical turn Eliot and Stevens took with regards to the music of poetry. Nevertheless, those same critics limited their investigations to questions of forms and structures, and disregarded the impact such musico- poetical assimilations have in the formulation of themes and poetical meaning. In this thesis, I attempt to go beyond the set of formal analogies already covered by previous critics, in order to consider the thematic and poetical impact musical aesthetics plays in Stevens’ and Eliot’s poetry. To achieve this aim, this study considers Eliot’s and Stevens’ use of musical aesthetics in poetry as a process of literary defamiliarization, as a process of literary misreading, as well as an interdisciplinary process of musico poetical assimilation. Following those different approaches of analysis, this study demonstrates Eliot’s and Stevens’ defamiliarization of musical metaphors, and soundscape descriptions from the Romantics, as an expression of their modernist skepticism. Furthermore, as it concentrates on Eliot’s and Stevens’ misreading of Dante’s use of music in The Divine comedy, this thesis demonstrates Eliot’s and Stevens’ use of music as an expression of their distinct religious sensibilities. In conjunction to the textual analysis of musical metaphors, and soundscape descriptions, this study considers Eliot’s and Stevens’ interdisciplinary use of musical techniques of composition in poetry. As it illustrates logical connections between metaphorical representations of music in poetry, and the interdisciplinary use of music in poetry, this thesis demonstrates that music, under its interdisciplinary and poetical forms, communicates Eliot’s and Stevens’ thematic preoccupations as modernist poets.