Date of Award
1986
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Pearce, Howard D.
Abstract
The word "angel" derives from "messenger" and enters into the language from the Hebrew mal' ahyehowah "messenger of Jehovah." In Stevens's cosmos, the gods have come to nothing, and so he metamorphoses the western, metaphysical sense of "messenger of God," while maintaining its messenger topos. Stevens's decreation of angel is an exercise in the language about the language. Stevens's new messenger is the poet, like Heidegger's Da-Sein. Stevens's angel poetry is filled with images that are "metagenetic," a characteristic that describes their metamorphic repetition. In the continuous repetition of the angel image, metaphor, and symbol, Stevens develops a poetic theory that differs from the phallologocentric beginnings of the traditional western metaphysical angel. Stevens supplants traditional poetic apotheosis with a transcendence/immanence defined as the aesthetic condition of fuller Being. Angels, destructured and restructured as a fiction, enable the poet and readers to refocus on the needs and aesthetics of contemporary perception.
Extent
105 p.
Recommended Citation
ENDRUSCHAT, MARY ELIZABETH, "GABRIEL'S NEMESES: STEVENS'S ANGELS (WALLACE STEVENS, POETRY, PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH)" (1986). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1980 - 1989. 451.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_3/451
Identifier
FADT14303
Comments
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1986.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters