Lyric Poetry and the Philosophy of Mind

FAIN: FA-55443-10

Oren Jeremy Izenberg
Regents of the University of California, Irvine (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

In Lyric Poetry and the Philosophy of Mind, I argue that institutional and methodological barriers between the study of poetry and philosophy in the analytic tradition have blocked a full consideration of poetry's technically sophisticated thinking about ordinary mental actions like believing, desiring, perceiving, remembering, intending. Conducting a conversation between strong poems and contemporary philosophical debates, this monograph will explore two propositions: first, that the conceptual resources of analytic philosophy have hermeneutic value--allowing us to see unfamiliar aspects of familiar poetic projects and to recast perennial poetic concerns in new ways. And second, that poetry's particular (generic, rhetorical, formal) styles of address to conceptual problems constitute rigorous and substantive contributions to the project of philosophical thought. The NEH fellowship would allow me to complete research and make substantial progress toward publication.