Abstract

This study explores the influence of Christian existentialism on Robert Penn Warren's late poetry. Drawing on the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, and Gabriel Marcel, it identifies parallels between Warren's and these philosophers' thoughts. Parallels are first apparent in Warren's ethical assessment of our time. Emphasizing the awareness of human sinfulness, the recognition of guilt, and the acceptance of moral responsibility, Warren joins the Christian existentialists in urging an ethical reawakening characterized by a reexamination of the values underlying our life goals. Unsystematic and respectful of human freedom of choice, Warren's ethics is not prescriptive, but encourages us to search for individual values through inward reflection. Affinities are also evident in Warren's metaphysics, which portrays reflection as a means of attaining self-knowledge and strengthening the self's relationships to reality and God. While acknowledging human limitations and the mystery inherent in existence, Warren affirms the need to seek truth despite the incompleteness of our findings, and to try to regain faith, however momentary and uncertain our faith might be. Since the mystery inherent in existence and the uncertainty of faith produce disquietude, Warren invites readers to brave anxiety through responsible action and active existential engagement. Finally, Warren adopts a Christian existentialist aesthetics when he relates the poetic to the actual, creating edifying art which helps audiences to consolidate selfhood and to contemplate transcendence. So that poetry may perform its edifying function, Warren presupposes the readers' appropriation of the poem's significance. To promote this appropriation, Warren employs various reader-involvement techniques. The study concludes by comparing Warren's late poems to the poetry of his most widely acclaimed contemporaries. While demonstrating that his affinities with Christian existentialism prevented Warren from following the trends prevalent in American poetry since the 1950s, the comparative survey also argues that the value and originality of his late poetry make it worthy of greater critical recognition than it has received