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Seamus Heaney's prose poetics return repeatedly to the adequacy of poetry, its ameliorative, restorative response to the inimical reality of life in the public domain. Drawing on manuscript as well as print sources, this thesis charts the development of this central theme, demonstrating the extent to which it threads throughout the whole of Heaney's thought, from his earliest conceptual formation to his late cultural poetics. Heaney's preoccupation with this idea largely originates in his undergraduate studies where he encounters Leavis and Arnold's accounts of poetry's adequacy: its ameliorative cultural and spiritual function. He also inherits, from Romantic and modernist influences, two differing accounts of poetry's relationship to reality. That conflicted inheritance engenders a crisis within Heaney's own early theorisation of poetry's adequacy to the violence of public life. An important period of clarification ensues, out of which emerge the dualisms of his later thought, and his emphasis on poetry's capacity to encompass, and yet remain separate from, ‘history'. Accompanied by habitual appropriation of Christian doctrine and language, these conceptual structures increasingly assume a redemptive pattern. By the mid-1990s, Heaney's humanist commitment to a ‘totally adequate' poetry has assumed a thoroughly Arnoldian character. The logical strain of his conceptual constructions—particularly the emphasis on poetry's autonomy from history—becomes acutely apparent, revealing just how appropriate the ambivalent ideal ‘adequacy' is. The subsequent expansion of Heaney's poetics into a general affirmation of the arts illuminates the fiduciary character of his trust in poetry while exposing the limits of that trust: Heaney's belief in poetry's adequacy constitutes a humanist substitute for—indeed, an ‘afterimage' of—Christian belief. This, finally, is the deep significance of the idea of adequacy to Heaney's thought: it allows us to identify precisely the Arnoldian origin, the late humanist character, and the limits of his troubled trust in poetry.

Cette thèse propose l’émergence d’une poésie de l’entre deux dans la littérature expérimentale, en suivant ses développements du milieu du vingtième siècle jusqu'au début du vingt-et-unième. Cette notion d’entre-deux poétique se fonde sur une théorie du neutre (Barthes, Blanchot) comme ce qui se situe au delà ou entre l'opposition et la médiation. Le premier chapitre retrace le concept de monotonie dans la théorie esthétique depuis la période romantique où il est vu comme l'antithèse de la variabilité ou tension poétique, jusqu’à l’émergence de l’art conceptuel au vingtième siècle où il se déploie sans interruption. Ce chapitre examine alors la relation de la monotonie à la mélancolie à travers l’analyse de « The Anatomy of Monotony », poème de Wallace Stevens tiré du recueil Harmonium et l’œuvre poétique alphabet de Inger Christensen. Le deuxième chapitre aborde la réalisation d’une poésie de l’entre-deux à travers une analyse de quatre œuvres poétiques qui revisitent l’usage de l’index du livre paratextuel: l’index au long poème “A” de Louis Zukofsky, « Index to Shelley's Death » d’Alan Halsey qui apparait à la fin de l’oeuvre The Text of Shelley's Death, Cinema of the Present de Lisa Robertson, et l’oeuvre multimédia Via de Carolyn Bergvall. Le troisième chapitre retrace la politique de neutralité dans la théorie de la traduction. Face à la logique oppositionnelle de l’original contre la traduction, il propose hypothétiquement la réalisation d’une troisième texte ou « l’entre-deux », qui sert aussi à perturber les récits familiers de l’appropriation, l’absorption et l’assimilation qui effacent la différence du sujet de l’écrit. Il examine l’oeuvre hybride Secession with Insecession de Chus Pato et Erin Moure comme un exemple de poésie de l’entre-deux. A la fois pour Maurice Blanchot et Roland Barthes, le neutre représente un troisième terme potentiel qui défie le paradigme de la pensée oppositionnelle. Pour Blanchot, le neutre est la différence amenée au point de l’indifférence et de l’opacité de la transparence tandis que le désire de Barthes pour le neutre est une utopie lyrique qui se situe au-delà des contraintes de but et de marquage. La conclusion examine comment le neutre correspond au conditions de liberté gouvernant le principe de créativité de la poésie comme l’acte de faire sans intention ni raison. / This dissertation proposes the emergence of a poetry of the threshold in experimental literature, tracing its development from the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. The notion of threshold poetry is premised on a theory of the neutral (Barthes, Blanchot) as that which is located beyond or between opposition or mediates. Chapter One retraces the concept of monotony in aesthetic theory, from the Romantic period, where it figures as the antithesis to changefulness or poetic tension, to the emergence of conceptual art in the twentieth century. Chapter One further examines the relationship of monotony to melancholy through an analysis of “The Anatomy of Monotony” by Wallace Stevens and alphabet by Inger Christensen. Chapter Two proposes a ‘poetry of the threshold’ through an analysis of four works of experimental, paratextually structured works of poetry: Louis Zukofsky’s index to “A”; Alan Halsey’s “Index to Shelley’s Death,” which comes after The Text of Shelley’s Death; Lisa Robertson’s Cinema of the Present; and Carolyn Bergvall’s multimedia work Via. Chapter Three retraces the politics of neutrality in translation theory. Against the oppositional logic of original versus translation, it hypothetically proposes the realization of a ‘third’ or threshold text, which also serves to disrupt the familiar narratives of appropriation, absorption and assimilation that efface the difference of the writing subject. It examines the hybrid work Secession with Insecession by Chus Pato and Erin Moure as an example of threshold poetry. For both Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes, the neutral represents a potential third term that baffles the paradigm of oppositional thought. For Blanchot, the neutral is difference taken to the point of indifference and the opacity of transparency while Barthes’ desire for the neutral is for a lyrical utopia that is located beyond the constraints of purpose and marketability. The conclusion examines how the neutral corresponds to the conditions of freedom governing the creative principle of poiesis as the act of making without intention or purpose.

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Contemporary Canadian prairie women poets write about the mother figure to counter maternal suppression and the homogenization of maternal representations in literature. Critics, like Marianne Hirsch and Andrea O’Reilly, insist that mothers tell their own stories, yet many mothers are unable to. Daughter and mother stories, Jo Malin argues, overlap. The mother “becomes a subject, or rather an ‘intersubject’” in the text (2). Literary depictions of daughter-mother or mother-child intersubjectivities, however, are not confined to auto/biographical or fictional narratives. As a genre and potential site for representing maternal subjectivities, poetry continues to reside on the margins of motherhood studies and literary criticism. In the following chapters, I examine the writing strategies of selected poets and their representations of mothers specific to three transformative occasions: mourning mother-loss, becoming a mother, and reclaiming a maternal lineage. Several daughter-poets adapt the elegy to remember their deceased mothers and to maintain a connection with them. In accord with Tanis MacDonald and Priscila Uppal, these poets resist closure and interrogate the past. Moreover, they counter maternal absence and preserve her subjectivity in their texts. Similarly, a number of mother-poets begin constructing their mother-child (self-other) relationship prior to childbirth. Drawing on Lisa Guenther’s notions of “birth as a gift of the feminine other” and welcoming the stranger (49), as well as Emily Jeremiah’s link between “‘maternal’ mutuality” and writing and reading practices (“Trouble” 13), I investigate poetic strategies for negotiating and engaging with the “other,” the unborn/newborn and the reader. Other poets explore and interweave bits of stories, memories, dreams and inklings into their own motherlines, an identification with their matrilineage. Poetic discourse(s) reveal the limits of language, but also attest to the benefits of extra-linguistic qualities that poetry provides. The poets I study here make room for the interplay of language and what lies beyond language, engaging the reader and augmenting perceptions of the maternal subject. They offer new ways of signifying maternal subjectivities and relationships, and therefore contribute to the ongoing research into the ever-changing relations among maternal and cultural ideologies, mothering and feminisms, and regional women’s literatures. / May 2016