Wallace Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of The Jar’ and ‘The Snow Man’: A Lexical - Semantic Interpretation

Abstract

The present study aims at presenting a lexical-semantic interpretation of Wallace Stevens’ poems ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ and ‘The Snow Man’ . The formalist approach is adopted to interpret the two poems . The formalist approach is chosen for the sake of interpreting the poems because it considers the language that is employed in literature as   self-centered. The function of such a literary language is to draw the reader’s attention to the formal characteristic features  that working together to form the literary text. The formal features that play a significant role in the poem and help to interpret it are symbols and images . The symbols and images that are employed in  the poems aid to interpret them . The paper contains a preface to Wallace Stevens and his relationship with modernism . It also refers to  the usability of the formal approach in interpreting poetry , the interpretation of  Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ and ‘The Snow Man’ and a discussion of the interpretation of  the two poems in terms of the formalist approach . The paper ends up with the conclusions and a list of  references .