

































Although Harold Rosenberg is not credited with main hermeneutical philosophers and theorists of his time, his 
“painting as event” presents an encounter with artwork common with the progression of literary hermeneutical 
thought. His “painting as event” can be analyzed as an encounter with the guiding elements of materiality as shown 
in the work of Louise Rosenblatt and Joanna Drucker. O!en, Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” is viewed 
without the addition of an audience, but Christa Robbins argues that Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” should 
be viewed within the habituses of socio-political thought Rosenberg was inherently a part of and the audiences he 
commonly interacted with. With a hermeneutical lens, one can view abstract expressionism not as unattainable, 
heroic actions but as moments of e"ective history and a performance within a habitus and with materiality that all 
art viewers can seek to understand.

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202411

A Fusing of Horizons: Approaching Rosenberg’s “American 
Action Painters” !rough a Hermeneutical Lens

by Chantelle Flores

 Harold Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters'' 
is credited for coining the widely-used term “action 
painting” to describe the abstract expressionist works 
being created by artists, such as Franz Kline and 
Willem de Kooning, throughout the 1940s and 1950s. 
Simultaneously with Rosenberg’s art criticism, new 
arguments in hermeneutics were being published by 
literary and philosophical theorists, such as Martin 
Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricœur. 
Although Harold Rosenberg is not credited within 
main hermeneutic publications, his argument of 
“painting as event” presents a perspective on one’s 
encounter with art common with the progression 
of literary hermeneutical thought.1 By analyzing 
Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” through 
hermeneutic and constructivist literary theories, one 
can #nd relevancy of Rosenberg’s work in the present 
day and in the work of literary criticism and theory. 
$e hermeneutic constructivist encounter between 
interpreter and work can be applied to Rosenberg’s 
own approach as a broader interaction between art 
and the viewer, or artist.
 In “American Action Painters,” Rosenberg 
argues the idea of painting becoming “an arena 
in which to act” in contrast to ideas of painting as 
a means for representation of an object, real or 
imagined.2 Rosenberg’s act of painting becomes an 

1 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters.” 
2 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 190.

“event” in which “the canvas [...is] a place where the 
mind records its contents” and “a ‘moment’ in the 
adulterated mixture of [their] life.”3 $e painting 
becomes a record of the lived experience of the 
artist and process, and as Rosenberg also notes, 
this mode of painting “attempts to initiate a new 
moment in which the painter will realize [their] 
total personality—myth of future self-recognition.”4 
Rosenberg’s “painting as event” then embraces a 
metacognitive approach to art. An initiation of a 
“new moment” in painting allows for a realization 
of the artist’s personality as their recognizable past 
self and the pliability of their present self to be 
changed by this realization—this moment of artistic 
encounter—in the future.5 Rosenberg presents and 
answers a #nal question: “[w]hat is a painting that is 
not an object nor the representation of an object nor 
the analysis or impression of it nor whatever else a 
painting has ever been—and that has also ceased to 
be the emblem of a personal struggle? It is the painter 
[them]self changed into a ghost inhabiting $e Art 
World.”6 Action painting, or Rosenberg’s “painting as 
event,” ceases to #t into the usual categories of artistic 
representation and instead becomes the remnants of 
this artistic encounter. However, it is an encounter 

3 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 191. 
4 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 193.
5 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 193.
6 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 195-6.



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Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202412

no longer limited to the artist and the process but of 
the artist and their habitation in a more intangible 
“Art World,” which can be the sparking inspiration 
for their self-recognition and re%ection.7

 To view Rosenberg’s concept of painting as an 
event through a hermeneutical lens, one must #rst 
identify hermeneutical theory in a broad sense. 
According to Nenon’s “Horizontality,” hermeneutics 
can be understood as an act of interpretation, or 
understanding, of someone or something beyond 
oneself.8 Nenon and Gadamer write of this as an 
encounter between one’s own “horizon”—the “all-
encompassing cultural and historical backgrounds 
against which things show themselves to us”—
and the horizon of another.9 In the case of theorist 
Emmanuel Lévinas, the interpretation of the other 
can be considered the attempt at understanding the 
intangibility of the sacred.10 $e idea of art being a 
hermeneutical encounter with an intangible other 
is not unknown to Rosenberg. In Rosenberg’s 
“Metaphysical Feelings in Modern Art,” written 
twenty-#ve years a!er “American Action Painters,” he 
addresses the idea of “art [...expanding] its searches 
into those areas of experience formerly considered 
to be the province of religion and metaphysics“ 
and of “art [...having] to deal with [one’s] eternal 
condition.”11 One can also take into consideration 
the quote from Wallace Stevens, a poet and 
philosopher, that Rosenberg begins his essay with: 
“[t]he American will is easily satis#ed in its e"orts 
/ to realize itself in knowing itself.”12 Not only is 
Wallace Stevens included in hermeneutic discourse 

7 Rosenberg, ‘$e American Action Painters,” 195-6.
8 Nenon, “Horizontality.” 
9 Nenon, “Horizontality,” 338.
10 Lévinas is brie%y quoted in an article by Gerald 
Bruns, in which he states that the other “confronts us 
in its irreducible singularity” and “is refractory to the 
categories by which we make the world intelligible.” $is 
intangibility is o!en translated into theological discourse. 
Bruns, “Hermeneutics.” 
11 Rosenberg, “Metaphysical Feelings in Modern Art,” 
222, 228.
12 Rosenberg quotes from Wallace Stevens’ essay, “$e 
Noble Rider and the Sound of Words.” Stevens, Wallace. 
“$e Noble Rider and the Sound of Words.” Rosenberg, 
“$e American Action Painters.” 

but Rosenberg begins his essay with a quote that 
welcomes the realization and self-re%ection that can 
be associated with hermeneutical encounters.
 In the recognition of hermeneutic interpretation 
as ultimately an act of understanding, the role of 
interpreter can be expanded within the context of 
“American Action Painters.” Although the above 
literary theorists rely upon the interaction of an 
interpreter and a literary work, an artist who is actively 
creating an art object or an art viewer are inherently 
interpreters as they attempt to make meaning, 
whether intentionally or unintentionally, of the art 
they interact with. One of the aims of “American 
Action Painters” is to provide an art audience a way 
to understand the gestural expressionism arising in 
the 1940s and 1950s in America. Rosenberg brings 
in the criticism of an audience with, “some people 
deny that there is anything original in the recent 
American painting.”13 $erefore, “American Action 
Painters” must not be read within purely the con#nes 
of the “event” between the artist and the art object 
but as a metacognitive event to be encountered by an 
audience.

Event as a Metacognitive Performance with 
Materiality
 As in the above summary, Rosenberg argues that 
“[a] painting that is an act is inseparable from the 
biography of the artist” and is “a ‘moment’ in the 
adulterated mixture of [their] life.”14 Similarly, in 
Louise Rosenblatt’s “$e Poem as Event,” she argues 
that “the text is a stimulus activating elements of the 
reader’s past experience—[their] experience with 
literature and with life” and that “Text becomes a 
‘lived experience.’”15 In her case, the literary text–or 
Text–is the literal words, paratext, and patterns of 
language that are the guiding principles and that the 
encounter with Text becomes ‘a poem.’ She continues 
with, “[a] poem, then, must be thought of as an event 
in time.”16 In both cases, an individual inherently 
brings their historicity, prejudgments, and parts of 
their identity into their encounter with an art object, 
which are stimulated by the guiding features of the 
art object. 

13  Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 189. 
14 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 191. 
15 Rosenblatt, “$e Poem as Event,” 126. 
16 Rosenblatt, “$e Poem as Event,” 126. 



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Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202413

 In Rosenberg’s art event, an artist approaches 
the canvas to interact with the materiality, the 
guiding elements of the object, in the broad intent of 
creating something. $is broad intent can be viewed 
as the artist’s inherent seeking to understand what 
the canvas can become or how oneself can interact 
with the materiality at hand, an interpretation of 
potentiality. $e element of action in the event 
on canvas is then this “moment” and is the “lived 
experience” of this potential. $rough Rosenblatt’s 
lens, action painting becomes an encounter between 
individual, materiality, and broader historical, 
social, and other contexts: an “intensely complex 
and evanescent web of ideas, feelings, sensations, 
[and] attitudes” inherently connected to the external 
world.17 Although one can directly relate the art 
viewer and artist to these broader external contexts, 
the work of Johanna Drucker further emphasizes the 
encounter with materiality as having a basis within 
these contexts as well.
 Like Rosenberg and Rosenblatt, Drucker later 
describes one’s encounter with an object, in her case 
an interpretation of a literary object, as an event: “the 
event is the entire system of reader, aesthetic object 
and interpretation—but in that set of relations, the 
‘text’ is constituted anew each time.”18 If one views 
Rosenberg’s artistic event as the potentiality of 
“lived experience” upon the canvas and a ful#llment 
of possibilities, one can connect Rosenberg’s 
event equally to Drucker’s event of interpretation. 
Drucker further describes an aesthetic object as 
“[o"ering] its possibilities, not as a thing or entity, 
but as a provocation to interpretation” and that their 
materiality “[expresses] conditions and a #eld of 
forces” which “are always probabilistic entities, subject 
to constrained but indeterminate possibilities.”19 In 
Drucker’s argument, she centers materiality upon the 
language of literature and semiotics, and her main 
example of the probabilistic nature to materiality 
is one’s idiolect, the unique “signature” of language 
such as what words and phrases one commonly uses 
and their speci#c understanding of words.

17 Rosenblatt, “$e Poem as Event,” 128.
18 Drucker, “Entity to Event: From Literal, Mechanistic 
Materiality to Probabilistic Materiality,” 8.
19 Drucker, “Entity to Event: From Literal, Mechanistic 
Materiality to Probabilistic Materiality,” 13.

 Rosenberg writes that “[l]anguage has not 
accustomed itself to a situation in which the act 
itself is the ‘object’” and “[s]ince there is nothing 
to be ‘communicated,’ a unique signature comes to 
seem the equivalent of a new plastic language. In 
a single stroke the painter exists as a Somebody—
at least on a wall.”20 First of all, Rosenberg credits 
language as a main means for “de#ning” objects 
and communication. However, he separates action 
painting as a kind of creational action rather than an 
action as a language for communication. I would like 
to argue that there is something being communicated 
through Rosenberg’s “new plastic language” and the 
“unique signature” (or idiolect) one forms around the 
materiality of action painting.21 In its broadest sense, 
communication can be de#ned as an exchanging or 
conveying of ideas, thoughts, feelings, or information. 
In the case of Rosenberg, the lack of communication 
is not necessarily a lack of informational exchange 
but rather a lack of communication within the 
context of oral and literary tradition. Rosenberg’s 
artistic event is not communicating through the 
“object [...] the representation of an object [...or] the 
analysis or impression of it [...or] the emblem of a 
personal struggle.”22 However, there is inherently 
space for one to interpret communication. If the 
object is the act itself and the gesture becomes a new 
language, an art viewer can of course understand or 
“read” that an action has taken place. Is this not a 
communication of action and an example of the acts 
the art viewer and interpreter can equally participate 
in?
 $us, the artist’s interaction, or encounter, with 
the materiality of the medium and the “language” of 
gesture allows for a communication of action. While 
action painters may not be representing or painting 
with the intent of portraying anything “deeper” than 
the materiality of the canvas, they are still inherently 
transferring an understanding of the materiality, 
communicating the ability to create art in this 
gestural style, and portraying their idiolect of this 
new plastic language. In this way, interpreters and art 
viewers can seek to understand the artist’s encounter 
with materiality as a metacognitive performance 
while being able to internalize for themselves the 

20 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 194-5.
21 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 194-5.
22 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 195-6.



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Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202414

actions they can perform upon their own canvases. 
$is understanding and interpretation then re%ects 
a hermeneutic approach as Nenon’s hermeneutic 
description of the fusing of horizons, one’s 
overarching habituses, historicities, and cultural and 
social in%uences. Nenon quotes Gadamer that these 
“horizons are never closed horizons [...] but are always 
in movement in the encounter with new experiences 
and with others” and that “understanding is always 
the process of the fusing of such purportedly self-
subsisting horizons.”23 $e artist allows themselves 
to approach the canvas with their own horizon of 
prejudices, an accumulation of artistic knowledge 
and skill or the assumptions of how certain materials 
will interact on the canvas, and leaves the #nished 
canvas—or “new experience”—having fused 
horizons with something new, a new understanding 
of the materiality or even an idea for the next artistic 
encounter inspired by what has been accomplished. 
Likewise, the art viewer approaches action painting 
with their own horizon of past experiences with art 
and background knowledge on art forms, styles, and 
theories. Yet, a!er encountering an art piece they 
have never seen before, the art viewer will leave their 
encounter with a fused horizon as well, a slightly 
changed perspective on art or a connection formed 
between themselves and the art or between the art 
and some other object. 

Event as Self-Re!ection and E"ective History
 It’s important to look at Rosenberg’s description 
of action painting once more as an act embedded 
in the artist’s biography. When the painting itself 
is “a ‘moment’ in the adulterated mixture of [their] 
life” and “of the same metaphysical substance as the 
artist's existence,” one can view this not only as a 
depiction of Nenon’s horizontality but speci#cally as 
the role of e"ective history in hermeneutics, which 
relies upon one’s engagement with self-re%ection and 
an understanding of the habitus(es) one’s inherently 
a part of.24 Similarly, Rosenberg writes that “the act 
on the canvas springs from an attempt to resurrect 
the saving moment in his ‘story’ when the painter 
#rst felt [them]self released from Value—myth of 
past self-recognition. Or it attempts to initiate a new 
moment in which the painter will realize [their] 

23 Nenon, “Horizontality,” 338. 
24 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 191. 

total personality—myth of future self-recognition.”25 
Here, Rosenberg’s resurrection of a captured 
“saving moment” is the artist’s re%ection upon 
their historicity, habitus, and what has led them to 
the moment in which they can freely act upon the 
canvas. Yet, the artist’s action upon the canvas can 
also be a moment in which the artist realizes the 
totality of themselves in relation to their historicity 
and is thus able to fuse their horizon anew. Rather 
than this dichotomous statement of “or,” I would 
like to argue that the event Rosenberg depicts relies 
inherently upon past self-recognition to create a 
moment of future self-recognition—e"ective history 
in action.
 Critics have noted Rosenberg’s work, in regards 
to “American Action Painters,” as “an a&rmation of 
the ego” and even a “petty-bourgeosie version of the 
Cartesian ‘Cogito ergo sum.’”26 Similarly, Rosenberg’s 
positioning of art as heroic and self-congratulatory 
has been viewed as inaccessible or elite, especially in 
masculine descriptions such as the “white expanse 
of the canvas as Melville's Ishmael.”27 In the context 
of only “American Action Painters” and connected 
associations to Rosenberg’s artistic event being 
heavily individualistic, it makes sense for critics to 
interpret action painting as placing an impossible 
weight of heroism onto artists and their actions 
as seemingly outside of any external forces. Yet, 
according to Robbins, “American Action Painters” 
must not be seen as constrained within a vacuum. 
Rosenberg’s “Character Change and the Drama” 
happened to be written in 1932, twenty years before 
his publication of “American Action Painters.” In 
Christa Noel Robbins’ “Harold Rosenberg on the 
Character of Action,” she examines a collection of 
Rosenberg’s works, such as “Character Change and 
the Drama” to shed light on Rosenberg’s Marxist 
ideologies and connections to socio-political 
contexts. Robbins writes that “Rosenberg’s concept 
of action painting can only be properly understood 
with reference to his long-term inquiry into how 
the individuality of action can be said to relate to 

25 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 193. 
26 Robbins, “Harold Rosenberg on the Character of 
Action,” 197. 
27 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 193.  



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Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202415

the sociality of form.”28 $e idea of individual action 
is then recognized as a part of social habituses in 
Rosenberg’s earlier work. 
 However, Rosenberg creates the distinction of 
individuality sparking from the action itself, the 
role in artistic encounter as described previously, 
while sociality comes into play in regards to “form.” 
Form can be considered the materiality of gesture, 
brushstrokes, and handling of material upon the 
canvas and further connected to the art institutions, 
traditions, and cultural and societal practices that 
have caused painting to even become a common 
form of art in the #rst place. Although the abstract 
expressionism, or action painting, Rosenberg writes 
about was considered both unconventional and a 
“new plastic language” at the time of #rst publication, 
these labels can only be placed in relation to the old 
or the conventional practices such as the habitus 
of artistic form and art institutions. To critique an 
institution or create the unconventional, one breaks 
away, or experiences hysteresis, from a habitus from 
within its con#nes. In Pierre Bourdieu’s “Structures 
and the Habitus,” he describes habitus as “the 
durably installed generative principle of regulated 
improvisations [that] produces practices which tend to 
reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective 
conditions [...], while adjusting to the demands 
inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, 
as de#ned by the cognitive and motivating structures 
making up the habitus.”29 $us, understanding that 
the artist and art viewer are inherently a part of a 
habitus does not necessarily have to be a prison or 
de#ne every action, thought, and the like as being a 
kind of mechanical representation of the habitus. As 
much as the habitus regulates our “improvisations” 
and practices, one must take note that it is ourselves 
who shape such habituses to begin with and 
that these actions within our habitus(es) are still 
improvisations and “potentialities” within our own 
situations.30 $e habitus can be considered equally a 
part of one’s horizon(s) and subsequent historicity, 
and thus, understanding the habitus and performing 
actions from this point of understanding allows 
for history to transform into e"ective history. $e 

28 Robbins, “Harold Rosenberg on the Character of 
Action,” 199.
29 Bourdieu, “Structures and the Habitus,” 751. 
30 Bourdieu, “Structures and the Habitus.”

recognition of one’s place in relation to overarching 
habituses is a vital step in this act of understanding 
and self-re%ection, especially when one, like 
Rosenberg’s action painters, wishes to perform the 
unconventional. 
 
Hermeneutical Understanding in Art Viewing
 It is unknown whether Rosenberg would have 
considered himself hermeneutic, and therefore, 
I would like to mention that it would be wrong to 
assume that Rosenberg was inherently hermeneutic. 
However, his revolutionary concept of “art as event” 
connects to later hermeneutic publications, such as 
the work of Rosenblatt ten years later, and he does 
present an understanding of at least the work of 
hermeneutic philosopher Wallace Stevens. Although 
Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” is seen 
mainly as an expression of an individual’s freedom 
through action, if analyzed in relation to hermeneutic 
philosophers and Rosenberg’s other works, the 
individuality of his action is one that is “inseparable 
from the biography of the artist” and their life.31 
I argue, especially through Robbins’ analysis of 
Rosenberg’s “Character Change and the Drama,” that 
Rosenberg’s understanding of the artist’s biography 
and life is not merely situated to the internal of 
the individual but to the external materiality and 
habituses they are a part of. Although Rosenberg 
showcases these ties to the work of hermeneutic 
philosophers, “American Action Painters,” with 
its depiction of the event between oneself and 
materiality and this moment of self-re%ection, is not 
credited in later hermeneutic publications or even 
within the sphere of literary thought. 
 $e Gadamerian hermeneutic encounter 
depicted in Nenon’s work as an understanding 
of the other, whether the other is something or 
someone previously unknown to us, is a concept key 
to recognizing ourselves in relation to another and 
for expressing the pliability of our own horizons to 
internalize the horizons of others. If one only views 
the artist portrayed in “American Action Painters” as 
a thoughtless, intentless being simply acting freely 
from any constraints of the external world, the 
artist becomes an impossibility. Yet, if one views the 
artist as approaching the materiality of the canvas 
with inherent thought and satisfying possibilities 

31 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 191.



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Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202416

emerging from their inherent relationship with the 
external world, “American Action Painters” depicts 
artwork that is both a part of the “lived experience,” 
accessible for art viewers to internalize through 
interpretation and for the artist to be recognized in 
the recognition and subsequent “breaking” out of 
the conventional habitus of artistic form. 
 Rosenberg ends “American Action Painters” 
with the following statement: “American vanguard 
art needs a genuine audience—not just a market. 
It needs understanding—not just publicity.”32 For 
Rosenberg’s goal of “American Action Painters” to 
become a reality, the art viewer must be involved in 
more than simply the economics and institutions 
behind action painting. Rosenberg’s art viewer must 
be able to reach understanding of the artist and 
the artist’s new language, an understanding that 
can only truly happen when one self-re%ects while 
becoming pliable to the unknown world of the other. 
It is not a re%ection of action beyond any constraints 
but a re%ection upon the possibilities regulated 
by such external constraints. $is understanding 
of Rosenberg’s work then corresponds with the 
later critique and discourse surrounding neo-
expressionism, which of course had its basis within 
the unconventional work of Rosenberg’s depicted 
artists. It is a transition of discourse that views 
expressionism and expressionistic work as part 
of a greater habitus and our collection of symbols. 
$erefore, Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” 
becomes a vital steppingstone in art history, art 
discourse, and even the realm of hermeneutical 
literary and philosophical discourse.
 By being able to understand “American Action 
Painters” through a hermeneutical, primarily 
literary, lens, as readers we have taken part in a 
hermeneutical process ourselves. $e horizons and 
habituses of the #elds of art criticism, history, and 
theory can be pliable, able to be connected to and 
inspired by discourses happening in the #elds of 
literature and philosophy. Just as Rosenberg’s action-
based artist is meant to create a means of pliability and 
understanding in a desired art audience, “American 
Action Painters” is meant to invoke the same kind 
of understanding in its desired audience. It is not a 
heroic, masculine action artist that Rosenberg truly 
depicts, but a metacognitive action artist who is a 
part of the world around them and represents “lived 

32 Rosenberg, “$e American Action Painters,” 198.

experience” as common encounter. It is with this level 
of understanding that gestural expressionism, and 
all art for that matter, should be viewed. $e action 
artist approaches the canvas open to the possibilities 
regulated by their—and the materiality’s—historicity 
and habitus, their mind open with merely the intent 
of creating something through their performance 
and event with the external “other.” Likewise, we can 
approach art with the same openness to possibility, 
our main intent simply to understand and remain 
pliable to the new. 

Notes
I must thank and credit Dr. Justin Wol" and Dr. 
Carla Billitteri with the University of Maine for 
providing the background knowledge, feedback, and 
coursework that led to this #nal analysis. 

Works Cited
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Structures and the Habitus.” 

Literary !eory: An Anthology. Ed. by Julie 
Rivkin and Michael Ryan. John Wiley & Sons, 
Incorporated (2017): 745-767.

Bruns, Gerald L. “Hermeneutics.” Encyclopedia of 
Aesthetics. Ed. by Michael Kelly, Oxford UP, 
(2011). oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/
opr/t234/e0261.

Drucker, Joanna. “Entity to Event: From Literal, 
Mechanistic Materiality to Probabilistic 
Materiality,” Parallax (2009): 15:4. 7-17.

Nenon, $omas J. “Horizonality.” !e Blackwell 
Companion to Hermeneutics. Ed. by Niall 
Keane, and Chris Lawn, John Wiley & Sons, 
Incorporated (2016): 335-340. 

Robbins, Christa Noel. “Harold Rosenberg on the 
Character of Action.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 
35, no. 2, June (2012): 195–214. DOI: 10.1093/
oxartj/kcs019.

Rosenberg, Harold. “$e American Action Painters.” 
In Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and 
Critique. Ed. Ellen G. Landau. New Haven: Yale 
University Press (2005): 189-198. 



A Fusing of Horizons: Approaching Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” !rough a Hermeneutical Lens

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  2024

Rosenberg, Harold. “Metaphysical Feelings in 
Modern Art.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 2, no. 2 (1975): 
217–32. jstor.org/stable/1342900. 

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “$e Poem as Event.” 
College English, vol. 26, no. 2 (1964): 123–28. 
DOI: 10.2307/373663.    
 

Stevens, Wallace. “$e Noble Rider and the Sound of 
Words.” !e Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality 
and the Imagination. New York, Alfred A. Knopf 
(1951).

  

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