Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert FrostRobert Pack’s lifelong delight in Robert Frost's intricate, beautiful, and profound poetry shines through in the essays in this book. He confronts such broad themes as mourning, inheritance, nature, and the imagination, bringing to bear historical, psychological, Darwinian, and close-textual-reading interpretive approaches. Chapter one sets Frost’s work in the tradition of nature writing, from the Book of Genesis through modern American ecological works. Chapter two examines the profound influences of the Book of Job, Darwin, and evolutionary theory on Frost’s thinking. There follow chapters that structurally and philosophically compare Wordsworth’s “Michael” to Frost’s “Wild Grapes,” focusing on the themes of inheritance, grieving, and the potency of the imagination. The reader encounters Frost as teacher and preacher, Frost’s idea of how beliefs are affirmed, the simultaneous representation of adult memory and immediate childhood sensation, and the underlying duality of place and nothingness, which forms the existential background for his “stay against confusion”—the consoling purpose of Frost's poetic art. |
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Page 51
... capacity for sympathy that feels for the most debased , with benevolence that ex- tends not only to other men but to the humblest living creatures as well . Darwin , like Job , turns back to the plenitude of creation , to the ani- mals ...
... capacity for sympathy that feels for the most debased , with benevolence that ex- tends not only to other men but to the humblest living creatures as well . Darwin , like Job , turns back to the plenitude of creation , to the ani- mals ...
Page 135
... capacity for deliberate signification . The creation of fictive or metaphorical belief , by means of which " the sureness of the soul " is evoked and given credence , is one of Frost's many examples of making " a stay against confusion ...
... capacity for deliberate signification . The creation of fictive or metaphorical belief , by means of which " the sureness of the soul " is evoked and given credence , is one of Frost's many examples of making " a stay against confusion ...
Page 174
... capacity for pity — is developed rela- tively late . " 13 In other words : It is hard to grow up . In his essay " Politics and the English Language , " George Orwell makes his appeal for truthfulness , that we employ language to ...
... capacity for pity — is developed rela- tively late . " 13 In other words : It is hard to grow up . In his essay " Politics and the English Language , " George Orwell makes his appeal for truthfulness , that we employ language to ...
Contents
Taking Dominion over the Wilderness I | 1 |
Darwin the Book of Job and Frosts A Masque of Reason | 33 |
Loss and Inheritance in Wordsworths Michael | 61 |
Copyright | |
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accept animals appears awareness beauty become begins belief bird Book brook capacity claims comes comfort continues created creation darkness Darwin death describes desire earth effect existence expresses face fact fall father fear feeling final force Frost further give God's hand heart hope human idea imagination Job's kind knowledge landscape language leaves light limits live look loss lovers Maple meaning metaphor Michael mind moral mother mourning muse narrator nature nature's never night nothingness offers once original past phrase physical play poem poem's poet poetry possible present reader reality reason represents response reveals Robert says seems seen sense sound speaker spirit Stevens story suggests symbolic tell things thought tion tree truth turn uncertainty universe voice wish woman Wordsworth York