The book is about finding ways to ‘attune’ poetry and philosophy. Attunement is a mutually shaping approach in which we really do philosophy in really appreciating poetry. This is best done by first exploring their worst tendencies to mutual antipathy. These worst tendencies, the subject of the first half of the book, are found in relations between poetry and analytic philosophy. The most notorious offender is the Austin-inspired speech act approach in analytic philosophy of language, which treats poetry—all poetry—with apparent disdain. The book argues for something surprising here. First, th ... More

The book is about finding ways to ‘attune’ poetry and philosophy. Attunement is a mutually shaping approach in which we really do philosophy in really appreciating poetry. This is best done by first exploring their worst tendencies to mutual antipathy. These worst tendencies, the subject of the first half of the book, are found in relations between poetry and analytic philosophy. The most notorious offender is the Austin-inspired speech act approach in analytic philosophy of language, which treats poetry—all poetry—with apparent disdain. The book argues for something surprising here. First, the disdain is comparatively superficial, and it proceeds from a view that unites speech act philosophers with poets: that poetic utterances are absolved from normal requirements of responsibility and commitment. Second, a speech act approach proves a particularly useful means to enhance our appreciation of poetry. For it directs attention to action, to the ways that uttering things counts as doing things, and poetic utterances are best appreciated by this kind of action-orientated approach. The second half of the book exploits this thought to promote attunement. It takes a particular phrase-type—the ‘Chaucer-type’—whose study has been important to the speech act approach, and examines its use by various poets, including Geoffrey Hill, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, J. H. Prynne and Robert Southwell. The book culminates in a long, close study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Philosophy benefits from this reflective study of uses of language, arriving at insights that simultaneously advance our appreciation of the poetry.