Abstract

The poetry and fiction of James Dickey reflect his quest for philosophical meaning and order in the fragmentation and chaos of modern life. As a result of his studies in philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Dickey has been influenced by the philosophical idealists, including the pre-Socratic thinkers, Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bergson. These thinkers provide Dickey a paradigm to resolve the dualities that he observed in his experiences in World War II, in his family and personal relationships, in nature, and in the universe at large. Dickey uses his studies in philosophy, along with his studies in anthropology, mythology, and literature, to create a unified ontology that imbues physical experience with metaphysical meaning and order. ;Dickey's poetry is divided into three periods: the "Early Motion," the "Central Motion," and the "Later Motion," while his novels may be considered his "Fictional Motion." In his poetry Dickey has experimented in content and style, as he moves away from concrete narrative of human experience and toward an abstract meditation on the significance of that experience. Dickey's novels display a similar development of subject and style. While Deliverance emphasizes a straight-forward narrative that focuses upon physical experiences, Dickey's second novel Alnilam uses an experimental split-page style that underscores the dualistic conflict between the protagonist's physical experience and his perception of his experience. The protagonist's blindness in Alnilam stresses the ontological and epistemological difficulties inherent in an empirical dependency upon the senses alone. In Alnilam, as in Dickey's other work, the persona learns to use his intellect and his intuition as correctives to the sometimes-faulty sensory information he receives about his exterior environment. ;James Dickey's poetry and fiction emphasize the possibilities of optimism and idealism in human life. Dickey's positive world view results from his perception of the interaction of the physical and the metaphysical realms. Dickey thus explores in his poetry and fiction the interpenetration of the vitality of concrete experience and the philosophical meaning of that experience