Date Thesis Awarded
7-2013
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
English
Advisor
Christopher J. MacGowan
Committee Members
Thomas Heacox
Robert St. Clair
Henry Hart
Abstract
Wallace Stevens' poetry is known for its exploration of imagination and meditation as part of the search for what he called the "supreme fiction." This potential fiction, necessary in Stevens' view for the modern age, would replace the myth-remnants of past religions, vestigial beliefs and mythologies which could no longer satisfy. In my thesis, I examine Stevens' drafts and unpublished manuscripts, as well as his body of poetic work, letters, essays, reviews, journal entries, and interviews, to explore in particular the way this search for a sustaining but temporary fiction incorporates the intersection of his claims for religious belief, love, and art.
Recommended Citation
Aylor, Emma Carter, ""The vernacular of light": Wallace Stevens' Constructions of Belief" (2013). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 601.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/601
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.