The Supreme Fiction: Fiction or Fact? Two Notes on Wallace Stevens and Philosophy

Abstract

The thesis presents two reflections on what it might mean to read Wallace Stevens philosophically. The first section argues that we would be better off avoiding the search for a supreme fiction in Stevens' poetry. By the poet's own standards, he never succeeded in creating one. The second section attempts to justify the abandonment of the search for the supreme fiction by suggesting another, perhaps more productive way in which Stevens' poetry might be philosophically read. In particular, it will be argued that what Helen Vendler calls Stevens' "qualified assertions" can be seen as a potent technique for the avoidance of philosophical dogmatism.