الفهرس 
A Journey Without and a Flight Within: An Introduction to Spiritual RealismOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Throughout history, man found himself entrapped between the materiality of the
physical world and the spirituality of the metaphysical one. Natural or man-made disasters that resulted in devastation and destruction in the wide world; created not deformed bodies, but fragmented selves lost in the world of the external reality. Looking at reality became similar to looking at a ferocious monster that is waiting to devour all what comes on its path. Hence, man started to dispense with the external world as it were and indulge into activities of the inner spirit in an attempt to forget the frustrations that surround him. To understand the aim and meaning of ‘being’, thereupon, man should make two journeys: without, to realize the other and within, to comprehend the self. The outer other and the inner self will confront one another, reflect one another, then become part and parcel of each other in an endeavour to have a tight grasp of both existence and essence.
Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) and Li Young Lee (1957 - ) have been intensely
dissatisfied with the external world and have exerted strenuous efforts to find a way to understand it. Sharing a christian background, they seem to have found two ways to comprehend the reason behind their existence: through the physical world (the other) and through the self. Comparing and contrasting the two poets is an attempt to underscore the odyssey each of them has taken to understand the external world. In search of being, Stevens and Lee have embarked on a lifelong journey following two distinct routes but
heading towards the same destination: voyaging through the universe and flying within the spirit. By digging deep into Stevens’ Harmonium (1923), Ideas of order (1936), Parts of the World (1942), and Transport to Summer (1947) and Lee’s Rose (1986), The City
in Which I love You (1990), Book of My Nights (2001) and Behind My Eyes (2008), the thesis will attempt to highlight the relationship between the self and the other in the poetry of Stevens and Lee.