Kindness in Modernist American Poetry

Dalton, Bridget (2016) Kindness in Modernist American Poetry. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Abstract:
This
thesis
poses
the
question,
‘can
we
find
Kindness
in
modernist
American
poetry?’
It
is
a
work
comprised
primarily
of
detailed
and
extended
close
readings
that
will
track
Kindness
through
selections
from
the
works
of
Gertrude
Stein,
Ezra
Pound,
William
Carlos
Williams,
Louis
Zukofsky,
George
Oppen
and
Charles
Reznikoff.
Working
within
an
understanding
that
no
interpretation
can
be
naïve,
this
thesis
argues
a
case
for
Kindness
as
a
“grammar
of
reading”
that
accounts
for
the
readerly
experience
of
the
neophyte
by
considering
the
notion
of
“reading
in
exile”.
This
is
undertaken
not
only
as
an
ethical
step
towards
accessibility
in
texts
that
are
conventionally
identified
as
presenting
a
stark
and
difficult
aesthetics
but
also
with
the
historical
considerations
of
the
relationship
between
high
art
and
mass
culture,
with
which
recent
thought
on
modernism
is
concerned
(Huyssen,
Perelman,
Jennison).
This
“grammar
of
reading”
is
developed
through
interpretations
of
twenty-­‐first
century
theorists
such
as
Derek
Attridge
(“singularity”),
Jane
Bennett
(“vibrant
matter”)
and
Eve
Kosofsky
Sedgwick
(“reparative
reading”
and
the
“paranoid
position”).
The
theoretical
work
of
this
“grammar
of
reading”
is
based
around
the
notion
of
“behaviour”
as
it
evinces
a
potential
critical
position
that
can
account
for
naïveté,
vulnerability,
and
not
knowing
within
reading
and
within
poems
themselves.
The
attendant
aim
of
this
project
then
is
to
explore
the
potential
and
implications
of
identifying
a
recognizable
Kindness
in
early-­‐twentieth
century
modernist
poetry.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
Depositing User:	Users 7376 not found.
Date Deposited:	22 Jun 2016 09:57
Last Modified:	22 Jun 2016 09:57
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/59451
DOI:

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