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A "New Literary History" Of Modern Poetry: History And Deconstruction In The Works Of Whitman, Stevens, And Olson, Paul A. Bové

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The literary history of Modern and Postmodern poetry needs to be rewritten because much of this poetry throws into doubt the very language which critics normally use to write such histories. Furthermore, Modern poetry provides a more adequate, because less rigid, sense of poetic “tradition” upon which authentic literary history must "rest." The "history" of Modern and Postmodern poetry is largely the work of New Critics and New Critically trained academicians. Although there have been recently some attempts to deal with Modern poetry from non-New Critical standpoints, they have not succeeded. Indeed, a deconstruction of the rhetoric of the New …

An Investigation Of The Satellite Poems In Melville's Clarel, William H. Wasilewski

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Though critics have completely disregarded their presence (Arvin, for example), or relegated them to a minor position, the satellite poems are one of the most important devices that Melville uses in Clarel. Forty-five in number (if one includes the bits of song that are present), they appear in a variety of forms at strategic points within the work. Melville, for example, introduces bawdy lyrics, a recitative, love songs, hymns, variations of the nursery rhyme and the traditional ballad, chants, a mystical inscription, several boisterous drinking songs, and a dirge.

Regarding the larger framework of the poem proper, the satellite …

The Final Man; The Poetry Of Theodore Roethke, Floyd Charles Stuart

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The intent of this dissertation is to delineate how Roethke'e use of the Eden motif informs his poetry and shapes his particular world outlook. I will illustrate how Roethke's growing conviction that time points to eternity leads him to insist on the value of intuitive modes of knowing. He slowly adopts an Edenic imagery that operates both explicitly and implicitly. Although the conflicts in his poetry are never without their contradictions, although one finds few "solutions," one can see developing in various concrete speakers a dichotomy between man as he is --“fallen man” -- and man as he should be …

Tradition And The Original Talent Of Theodore Roethke, Marylou Lewandowski

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

When I turned to study the modern poets a few years ago, Theodore Roethke's voice rang most clearly and most convincingly. The poet's untimely death in 1963 made his canon complete; by then Roethke had been awarded most of the major poetry prizes offered in this country, and it seemed likely that his status as a “major” poet would demand that close attention be paid to his more difficult poems. Turning to the criticism we find, however, that (with a few significant exceptions) attention to the poems is neglected in favor of arguments about the poet's originality or lack of …