The never-resting mind

the long version

The Never-Resting Mind explores Wallace Stevens' poetic use and transformation of a major strain of romantic thought. Romantic irony, a philosophical attempt to explain the mind's ability to both construct the world and see beyond its own constructions, was first theorized in the late eighteenth century by Friedrich Schlegel. An opposing view of the concept emerged in attacks on Schlegel's theory by Hegel and Kierkegaard. This study describes the complex expression of these antithetical senses of irony - one that gestures toward engagement, the other toward transcendence - in Stevens' work, in the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, and in postmodern authors such as Barthelme and Ashberry.