DESIGNS IN INDETERMINACY: A STUDY OF POE AND MALLARME

This dissertation is an exploration of the ways in which Edgar Allan Poe and Stephane Mallarme exploit the limitations and inadequacies of language to achieve a predetermined indefiniteness of effect. Efforts toward an essential unity, proferred equivalences between the symmetry of cosmos and poem, a cult of Beauty as sacred mystery, are concerns pervasive in the intellectual landscape of nineteenth and early twentieth century literature. As many critics have noted, the aesthetic theories of both Poe and Mallarme address these themes. What interests me, however, is not their vision of an unknowable Beauty, but rather the move toward the indefinite through craft.; Neither Mallarme nor Poe delude themselves into an ideal of poet as "genie" whose mere utterance can count as recreation. Firmly grounded in a Cartesian sense of order and a respect for the self-cognizance of thought, they desire not to create the ideal. Far too lucid for such a hope, they attempt to suggest idea, while alternately affirming and denying the possibility. This vacillation is central to their poetic. Poe's method in Eureka is treated as a basis, founding the thesis that the subsequent chapters work to refine and extend. The design of Eureka, the verbal formation of the "possible attempt at an impossible conception," displays how abstract idea comes into being through form.; Poe is not the normal aspirer after an infinite. He aspires to draw bounds, and he uses the rigors of an atomistic method to hint at the shadowy and intangible realms. My discussion of Eureka provides the terms necessary for a reconsideration of his two landscape sketches, "The Domain of Arnheim" and "Landor's Cottage." The notion of "effect" manifests itself in these tales as a device for deliberate artistic creation, shifting the artist's attention from vision to craftsmanship.; I argue that Poe's "cosmology" of the universe and his method lead to Mallarme's design. I analyze Mallarme's Igitur and "Une Dentelle s'abolit." Emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences between Poe and Mallarme, I suggest that their hyperbolic calls for Beauty are a screen for a real emphasis on method, an aesthetic cover that veils their limitless ambition to capture the language of the cosmos. Theirs is a constructed imprecision, made up of things contradictory to essence: circumscription, a formal measure, an emphasis on the materiality of words and on their necessary alliance with nature's intentions. This led me to what I call the method of indeterminacy. The method itself comprises the fiction that gives rise to the appearance of a final harmony. I employ indeterminacy to mean the technique that leads to the effect of indefiniteness. Used in this way, the term connotes not merely a state or property ascribable to language, such as indefiniteness or imprecision, but also presents a constructive process. Under diverse forms and guises, through a materialization of doubt in lexical and syntactic oscillations, language tends to the spirituality of the most intangible speculation.; The dissertation proceeds through close readings of the selected texts. Each analysis is a subjective approach toward an objectification of the functions related, a search for a basic law that evolves out of the processes of the text. I attempt to show that beyond the discords and assymetries there is a larger unity that coincides with the final effect. The success of the verbal design depends, finally, upon the suggestion of idea.