Poetry as Praxis: The Hermeneutical Circle of Allen Tate and Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

Abstract:Allen Tate's own memorial as a poet will always be "Ode to the Confederate Dead," a portrait of a meditative persona who surrenders to a sterile "circularity of soul." Regardless, Tate the critic's work continues to demonstrate that his own "personal dilemma [was] perhaps not so exclusive," and that his "practical solution" does survive in a post-theory era ("Narcissus" 600). Just as the "positive and … productive notion of distanciation" underlies and animates Paul Ricoeur's most important works of later hermeneutical phenomenology, Tate's similar "solution" became the enduring theme of his criticism in the decades following the publication of his most famous poem. The hermeneutical circle, defined in different terms and in different generations by two like-minded critics, allows what Ricoeur calls "the moment of possession and of enjoyment" while maintaining that "representation is always … at a distance" (Freedom and Nature 96).