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Speaking the unnameable : A phenomenology of sense in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

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Husserl4Q_MLA_Aug2012.pdf (266.7Kb)
Date
2013
Author
Levina, Jurate
Keywords
T. S. Eliot
Edmund Husserl
phenomenology
semiotics
aesthetics
PS American literature
B Philosophy (General)
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Abstract
Through its ostensibly philosophical rhetoric and multiple allusions, Four Quartets manifests a continuity between Eliot’s poetic thought and his early engagement with philosophy. The thematic core of this continuity is Eliot’s concern with the meaningful experience of reality, described as equally dependent on direct perception and on linguistic structure: language shapes perception into a meaningful world-vision, while experience itself is an ongoing process of interpreting (or signifying) that which is perceived. This link empowers poetic language, entangling the reading consciousness in a process to which Husserl’s descriptions of consciousness refer as “sense-giving.” Four Quartets epitomizes both the phenomenological description and the poetic enactment of meaningful experience. Its opening movement both mimics the structure of experienced reality and keeps the reading eye in the process of making sense in its full complexity, involving all faculties of apprehending reality, from the metaphysical logo-centric systems underlying conceptual understanding of the world to the direct sensuous perception of immediate environment.
Citation
Levina , J 2013 , ' Speaking the unnameable : A phenomenology of sense in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets ' , Journal of Modern Literature , vol. 36 , no. 3 , pp. 194-211 .
Publication
Journal of Modern Literature
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0022-281X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2013. Indiana University Press. This article was published as Levina, J. (2013) ‘Speaking the Unnamable: A Phenomenology of Sense in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets’, Journal of Modern Literature, Vol 36 (3), pp. 194-211. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photographic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Indiana University Press. For educational re-use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center http://www.copyright.com/. For all other permissions, please visit Indiana University Press' http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/rights/rightsjournal.html.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_modern_literature/v036/36.3.levina.html
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4681

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