Wallace Stevens’s use of narrative markers in <i>Harmonium</i>

Abstract

In this article Wallace Stevens’s first published volume of poetry, “Harmonium” is examined in order to demonstrate that by his deployment of narrative markers in key poems of the collection his quintessentially modernist lyrics challenge the restrictive figurative range of hegemonic enlightenment cultural theory and practice. In so doing I advance the argument of my article on Sidney’s sonnet sequence which suggests that awareness of strategic rhetorical figuration leads to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between lyric and narrative.

Keywords

• Allegory
• Harmonium
• Modernism
• Rhetorical Figures
• Silva Tradition
• Wallace Stevens