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"A Long Wonder The World Can Bear & Be" : Narrative Strategies In The Dream Songs, Cooper Childers

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis examines the narrative development of The Dream Songs while viewing Henry as the locus and the impetus of the various narrative strategies deployed therein. Through the abundance of generic and literary allusions present in The Dream Songs, Berryman's sequence functions both to engage and to interact with the Western literary canon. The first chapter of this thesis locates The Dream Songs within Petrarchan sequences. The second chapter treats Henry's and the unnamed speaker's local language and shows how their competing speech genres inform the sequence's modes. The third chapter examines the role of epic codes in creating the …