Wallace Stevens and Religion
This essay offers an explication of Wallace Stevens' poem "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman."Addressing “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman,” the speaker proposes “poetry” as “the supreme fiction” (line 1) rather than God or religion. Stevens considered religion as fictions, imaginative creations that made it possible for people to feel at home in a world that is not naturally homelike and hospitable. Thus the speaker’s statement suggests that religious fictions have no greater status than fictions of the imagination that include sensuality and play. Yet in his announcement that poetry is “the supreme fiction,” the speaker proclaims the supremacy of the human creative imagination. Religion (“the moral law” [line 2]) has built churches populated with the bodied souls of worshippers, and from that
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Approximate Word count = 563
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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