Manner and Manners

doi:10.1017/9781108973946.017

Chapter 16 - Manner and Manners

from Part III - Revisionary Readings of Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021

Zachary Finch

Edited by

Bart Eeckhout and

Gül Bilge Han

Show author details

Bart Eeckhout: Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Gül Bilge Han: Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Finch’s chapter argues that the rhetorical artifice in Wallace Stevens’s poetry may be best understood through the concept of manner. In contrast with style, which focuses on the personal signature of a writer’s work, manner refers to the more social, public aspects of a writer’s rhetorical bearing. Drawing on a range of critics who have theorized aesthetic manner and the politics of manners, including Pierre Bourdieu, Giorgio Agamben, Henry James, and Lionel Trilling, this chapter proposes that Stevens’s interest in textiles and clothing, in figurations of nobility, and in the mannerist syntax of repetition are not just neutral aesthetic traits but expressions of a sensibility tied to social categories that include class and race. After examining these intersections in poems spanning Stevens’s career, Finch closes by suggesting that the most meaningful approaches to Stevens’s formal prosody should remain attentive to the social posture and cultural tones of his language.

Keywords

Wallace Stevens rhetoric manner manners mannerism style nobility repetition Henry James Gilles Deleuze

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Wallace Stevens Studies , pp. 213 - 225

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973946.017 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adams, Henry. Henry Adams: Novels, Mont Saint Michel, The Education. Edited by Samuels, Jayne and Samuels, Ernest, Library of America, 1983.Google Scholar

Agamben, Giorgio. The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford UP, 1999.CrossRef Google Scholar

Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884–1919. Free P, 1965.Google Scholar

Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biography. Random House, 1983.Google Scholar

Brogan, Jacqueline V., editor. Stevens and Structures of Sound. Special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, Fall 1991, pp. 107–241.Google Scholar

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar

Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley, U of Minnesota P, 1993.Google Scholar

Doyle, Charles, editor. Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.Google Scholar

Editorial. The Seven Arts, vol. 1, no. 1, Nov. 1926, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

Feinsod, Harris. The Poetry of the Americas: From Good Neighbors to Countercultures. Oxford UP, 2017.Google Scholar

Filreis, Alan. “Sound at an Impasse.” The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring 2009, pp. 15–23.Google Scholar

Finch, D. Zachary. “‘He That of Repetition Is Most Master’: Stevens and the Poetics of Mannerism.” The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 36, no. 2, Fall 2012, pp. 194–205.CrossRef Google Scholar

Galvin, Rachel. “‘This Song Is for My Foe’: Olive Senior and Terrance Hayes Rewrite Stevens.” Poetry and Poetics after Wallace Stevens, edited by Eeckhout, Bart and Goldfarb, Lisa, Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 229–43.Google Scholar

Gerber, Natalie. Introduction. Wallace Stevens and “The Less Legible Meanings of Sounds,” edited by Gerber, special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring 2009, pp. 3–14.Google Scholar

Glück, Louise. Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry. Ecco P, 1994.Google Scholar

James, Henry. Henry James on Culture: Collected Essays on Politics and the American Social Scene. Edited by Walker, Pierre A., U of Nebraska P, 1999.Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. The Modernist Papers. Verso, 2016.Google Scholar

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Translated by A. J. Krailsheimer, Penguin, 1995.Google Scholar

Spicer, Jack. The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer. Edited by Gizzi, Peter, UP of New England, 1998.Google Scholar

Steinman, Lisa M. “Unanticipated Readers.” Poetry and Poetics after Wallace Stevens, edited by Eeckhout, Bart and Goldfarb, Lisa, Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 217–28.Google Scholar

Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Edited by Stevens, Holly, U of California P, 1996.Google Scholar

Stevens, Wallace Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Edited by Kermode, Frank and Richardson, Joan, Library of America, 1997.Google Scholar

Trilling, Lionel. The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. Macmillan, 1950.Google Scholar

Vasari, Giorgio. “Preface to the Third Part.” Readings in Italian Mannerism, edited by Cheney, Liana De Girolami, Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 27–34.Google Scholar

von Hallberg, Robert. Lyric Powers. U of Chicago P, 2008.CrossRef Google Scholar