The phenomenological approach to poetry

Mikel Dufrenne

pp. 109-119

in: Ronald Bruzina, Bruce Wilshire (eds), Crosscurrents in phenomenology, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1978

Abstract

Many approaches to poetry are conceivable. Indeed many are practiced—historical, sociological, psychological, psychoanalytic, formalist, semiological, for example. I would like to show here that the phenomenological approach is privileged. In a nutshell, the aim of the phenomenological approach is to describe the lived-experience of poetry and to bring out the meaning of poems revealed in the experience. I do not want to say, by calling the phenomenological approach privileged, that it should exclude others. The dogmatic proposal of any one method seems futile to me. Every kind of knowing is in process, not only because of its historicity but also because of the inexhaustibility of its object which imposes a multiplicity of Abschattungen. As for poetry, every step of its process opens up to phenomenology. First, because the phenomenology of poetry lets us take hold of, if not define, the poeticalness of poetry. And secondly, because a phenomenology of poetry leads to an ontology and thus provides a foundation for other interpretations.