Rage For Order:a Study Of Wallace Stevens’ Ideas Of Order

As one of five giant modern poets in American poetic circle, Wallace Stevens isregarded as a poet s poet in the twentieth century. He distinguishes himself by hismeditative yet concise writing style. The poems of Stevens contain abundant philosophicalideas that critics have analyzed from the perspective of the biography, history,existentialism, deconstruction and etc.. The thesis, by taking Ideas of Order as the case,conducts a tentative study on how the Stevens protagonists confronted by the alienation ofreality and imagination unceasingly pursue the order and construct the ideal of orderguided by three principles of his Supreme Fiction-it must be abstract; it must change; itmust give pleasure.This thesis is composed of five parts. Introduction relates the poet s life experienceand his poetry career as well as his second collection of poems, Ideas of Order. The firstchapter gives a brief account of the sprout and background information of the rage fororder. Faced with the collapse of belief and nihility of significance, Stevens, aiming torelieve human s frustration toward fragmented reality, makes conscious efforts through hispoetry to rebuild the shattered world and self. Protagonists, the reflectors of nature in hisHarmonium, evolve to be the participators in reality in Ideas of Order. The followingchapters argue that speakers in Ideas of Order cornered to face our own humanpredicaments have been pushed into a stage where the man is struggling for understandinghis involvement in the war between the chaotic reality and the order on the due. Thesecond chapter puts the emphasis on the formation of the ideas of order by means ofelaborating how the protagonists in Ideas of Order cornered by the human dilemma andarmed with the ignorant eye deconstruct the reality with the aid of the imagination as wellas reconstruct the order in the idea driven by the rage for order. The whole process ofpursuing order reflected in Ideas of Order could be translated into three periods: exploring,deconstructing and recreating. The last chapter illustrates the moulding of ideal of orderwith the guidance of principles of Supreme Fiction. On one hand, reality fabricated bynegation, simplification and abstraction has been reduced into its "first idea" with theupdated conceptualization. On the other hand, imagination modulated by exploration,transformation and integration fuse with reality to approach the order. The heroic poet,with the adjustment of imagination, perceives the world, pursues the order and composeshis new mythology. Ideas of Order ends not with a whimper but with a conviction that thehuman self must become the hero of his world to construct the ideal of order. The thesis concludes that Stevens, qualifies himself as a participator and explorer ofhuman predicaments in Ideas of Order, in which he shows his unswerving devotion to zealfor the rage for order, via deconstruction of reality with the assistance of imagination. As isimplied in The Idea of Order at Key West, through the analysis of rage for order, theperils of the way to order never come to an end while poetry, served as the SupremeFiction, helps people realize the value of the chaos and negation, as well as stimulates andsustains human beings rage for order with a view to helping people live a better life.