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From Pastorals To Paterson: Ecology In The Poetry And Poetics Of William Carlos Williams, Daniel Edmund Burke

Dissertations (1934 -)

Modernist poet William Carlos Williams died in 1962 - a landmark year in the history of the modern environmentalist movement. He did not live to see contemporary culture come to the deeper appreciation of humanity's place in the world which we now know as ecology. This dissertation will argue, however, that supporting his entire oeuvre of poetry are philosophical and poetic underpinnings which resonate strongly with - and usefully anticipate - our modern understanding of the interpenetrative relationship between natural and culture, human and nonhuman. I begin by tracing the roots of Williams's "ecopoetics" back to the father of Williams's …