Abstract

I hold there is an essential disagreement between poetry and philosophy. Poetry and philosophy are both responses to the experience of wonder, in which we as human beings are overwhelmed with awe-inspiring curiosity and hence pursue the truth about nature and---almost invariably---our supernatural destination. The disagreement, what Plato calls "the ancient quarrel," arises because poetry and philosophy utilize different and sometimes incompatible means to pursue the truth. Roughly speaking, philosophy can be characterized as a rational response to wonder, poetry as an imaginative one. The quarrel, which can go on between poets and philosophers, also goes on in the individual psyches of poets and philosophers. Such internal quarrels become the focus of the chapters of my dissertation. I examine Plato, Dante, Vico, Yeats, and Heidegger---figures who embody the quarrel within their own intellectual work and represent paradigmatic moments in the struggle between the imagination and reason