The spirit of sound: Prosodic method in the poetry of William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot

This project focuses on the prosody of three major poets, William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot. It explores the relationship between each poet's poetic sound structures and his spiritual aims. The project argues that in Blake's prophetic poems The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem, in Yeats's middle and late poetry, and in Eliot's post-conversion poetry, the careful structuring of the non-semantic features of language serves to model a process through which one may arrive at the threshold of a spiritual reality.;The introductory chapter situates these poets' works within the genre of mystical writing; establishes the epistemological nature of poetic sound and its relationship to mystical expression; considers the historical and personal exigencies that influence each poet's prosodic choices; and outlines the prosodic method by which their poetry is scanned. Chapter one addresses William Blake's efforts to re-vision Milton's Christian epic Paradise Lost by means of a logaoedic prosody intended to move the reader from a rational to a spiritual perception of the self and the world. Chapter two considers the development of W.B. Yeats's contrapuntal prosody as integral to his attempt to make of himself a modern poet and to his antithetical mystical philosophy. Chapter three explores the liminal prosody of T. S. Eliot by which he creates an incantatory movement that points to a spiritual reality behind material reality. The project concludes with a consideration of the spiritual aims of Gerard Manley Hopkins and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and posits a revaluation of Hopkins' sprung rhythm and H.D.'s revisionary chain of sound as prosodic practices intrinsic to their spiritual aims.