Abstract

This study is an implicit challenge to the belief that language is the only organizing principle to human thought. Beyond language, there is form understood as act. Relating musical harmony to the poetic structure of "meaning," this in-depth study of form connects poetry, music, and the philosophy of art. ;In the initial chapter the study constructs a formalist background, including Bell, Cassirer, Langer, and German and early Russian Formalism. Through the criticism of M. H. Abrams, I connect that formalist foundation to recent criticism on poetry and music, especially Kramer and Winn. Throughout, form is considered as vital and inseparable from content. ;The second chapter focuses on the greater lyrical form, which I discern and name, as the Significant Form common to the greater Romantic lyric and the sonata form, both objectifying Schelling's system of transcendental idealism. Their common ABA' progression leads to the final unity determined by the "I", the tonic, and the subjective of characteristically masculine attributes. This progression is neither a program to a musical form nor a restrictive pattern in poetry, but an unconsummated symbolic procedure of parallel morphology of feeling . The nonverbal structure in poetry allows for the comparison between the arts. ;In the third and fourth chapter I relate specific poems by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats to specific sonata-form compositions by Beethoven, Chopin, and Schubert. Occasionally I elucidate the dynamic of the greater lyrical form with analogies from science. I recognize and analyze gender as an important formative agent of the greater lyrical rhythm, also in absolute music. ;The self's gradual dispersal in poetry after Romanticism corresponds to similar tendencies in music, as the tonic loses its central position. In the final chapter, I connect Tennyson's Maud to Lutoslawski's aesthetic, Bishop's "Roosters" to a Scarlatti sonata, and Aiken's Preludes to Chopin's Preludes. ;The study provides a specific rationale for the intuited closeness of poetry and music, so ardently proclaimed by the Romantics, but never explained by them. It also offers entirely new readings of poetry, thus enlarging both the scope and methods of literary theory