Overview

Poetry is vital to the well-being of philosophical thought. Without poetry, philosophy has steadily become utterly impoverished. Modern analytical or positivist philosophy, especially, has been framed within the tunnel-vision of a narrow scientistic rationalism2 for far too long. Yet, for philosophy to reclaim its poetic roots, it is necessary to undertake a critical discourse upon the nature of poetry and its existential dimensions. This is needed to determine the manner in which poetry can affect changes in our philosophical understanding. The current exclusive hegemony of critical discourse in philosophy dictates that this study be undertaken according to these modes. However, as I hope to show, without the balance of poetry, critical discourse tends to presumptions that are needlessly rigid and narrow in their conception of the relation of word to world. The topic of this thesis is the re-evaluation of the status of poetry, its existential consequences and its re-integration into philosophy. To this end, this thesis will include with the philosophy chapters a parallel stream of case studies on the poetry of Australian poet Francis Webb. Although these chapters extend the word-count beyond the requirements for a doctoral thesis, nevertheless, they are considered necessary to both illustrate and deepen our comprehension of the philosophy, while revealing how a poet, by dint of her or his deep reflection, is a philosopher in everything but name only. Philosophical theory combined with literary-critical theory and the critical discourse on particular poetry has a cumulative effect, enriching philosopher, literary critic and lay reader of poetry

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9781805243359

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