00) Table of Contents

***(draft jg)****Note: underlines below are clickable*

Preface #1 (leading Stevens scholar)
Preface #2 (leading Santayana scholar, Herman Saatkamp)
Introduction. A Discovery. Pushback. A Working Hypothesis. Importance.

I. PLAUSABILITY

Two Lives Interwined (Stevens and Santayana). Harvard Days, Harvard Nights. The Poet in the Gray Flannel Suit. Forty Years Later. Two Phaedos.

Where did Stevens Get his Ideas? Stevens’ Books, Stevens’ Sources. “A Collect of Philosophy,” or A Record of Inspiration. Discoveries and Denials: The Anxiety of Influence. Justification: Imitation Versus Resemblance.

Three Examples
1) “The World as Meditation” & “XVII. The Cognitive Claims of Memory”
2) “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain” & “XI. The Watershed of Criticism”
3) “Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself” & “XXVI. Discernment of Spirit”

Kinds of Evidence & Influence; Value of this Working Hypothesis

II) IMPLICATIONS

“The Rock” as a “Book”(Organization of “Scepticism and Animal Faith.” Parallel structures. Chronology of the Composition of the Poems.)

SAF & The Rock: a) Scepticism and Animal Faith, An Overview & Its Place in Santayana’s Work; b) The Rock, An Overview & Its Place in Stevens’ Work

Assays of the Poems vis-à-vis the Chapters (and an invitation to Others)

• Scepticism: “Nothing Given Exists”: The Nation Group: The First 8 Poems of The Rock”
  1) “An Old Man Asleep” & “Preface” (to Scepticism and Animal Faith)
  2) “The Irish Cliffs of Moher” & “I. There is no First Principle of Criticism”
  3) “The Plain Sense of Things”& “II. Dogma and Doubt”
  4) “One of the Inhabitants of the West” & “III. Wayward Scepticism”
  5) ‘Lebensweisheitspielerei” & “IV. Doubts about Self-Consciousness”
  6) “The Hermitage at the Center” & “V. Doubts about Change”
  7) “The Green Plant” & “VI. Ultimate Scepticism”
  8) “Madame La Fleurie” & “VII. Nothing Given exists”
• The Discovery of Essence
  9) “To an Old Philosopher in Rome” & “VIII. Some Authorities for this Conclusion” & “IX. The Discovery of Essence”
  10) “Vacancy in the Park” & “X. Some Uses of this Discovery”
  11) “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain” & “XI. The Watershed of Criticism”: see above
• Animal Faith: Belief in Discourse
  12) “Two Illustrations That the World Is What You Make of It” & XII. “Identity and Duration attributed to Essences”
  13) “Prologues to What is Possible” & “XIII. Belief in Demonstration”
  14) “Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly” & “XIV. Essence and Intuition”
• Animal Faith: Belief in Experience (XV, XVI)
  15) “Song of Fixed Accord” & “XVI. Belief in the Self”
  16) “The World as Meditation” & “XVII. The Cognitive Claims of Memory”: see above
  17) “Long and Sluggish Lines” & “XV. Belief in Experience”
  18) “A Quiet Normal Life” & “XVIII. Knowledge is Faith mediated by Symbols”
• Animal Faith: Belief in Substance (incl XVII, XVIII)
  19) “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” & “XIX. Belief in Substance”
  20) “The Rock” & “XIX. Belief in Substance,” “XX. On Some Objections to Belief in Substance,” and “XXI. Sublimations of Animal Faith”
• Animal Faith: Belief in Nature
  21) “St. Armorer’s Church from the Outside” & “XXIII. Evidences of Animation in Nature”
  22) “Note on Moonlight” & “XXIV. Literary Psychology”
  23) “The Planet on the Table” & “XXII. Belief in Nature”
• Animal Faith: Belief in Truth and in the Spirit
  24) “The River of Rivers in Connecticut” & “XXV. The Implied Being of Truth”
  25) “Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself” & “XXVI. Discernment of Spirit” and “XXVII. Comparison with Other Criticisms of Knowledge”: see above

C. Conclusions

Appendix (draft)

• Acknowledgments: Contributors
  *Stevens & Santayana Scholarship: Bibliography (Serio bibliography)
  *Outline of “Scepticism and Animal Faith”
  *Anomalies in Sequencing: *Poems Misbegotten and Misplaced: “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” & “The Course of a Particular”
  *Motifs and Word Frequency
  *A Note on the Index to SAF; a Santayana Lexicon?
  *Philosophy & Poetry: a) Santayana on Poetry; b) Stevens on Philosophy

To continue to the Introduction, click here.