Writing in the 1890s, in an early account of Tennyson’s poetry, the Victorian anthologist F. T. Palgrave was keen to maintain the myth of the spontaneous singer. ‘More than once’, he recorded, Tennyson’s ‘poems sprang’ from a ‘nucleus’, ‘a brief melodious phrase’ or ‘song’, which, if not transcribed immediately, ‘fled from him irrecoverably’. It has long been the case with poets of ‘lyrics’ and ‘songs’ that their skills have been depicted as improvisatory, fleeting, or inspired. Their skills have been understood, variously, as indicative either of the most dexterous of intellects, or of brilliant but uncontrolled visions, a ‘flash’ of prophetic insight or revelation – a feel of what Shelley likens to ‘the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own’. For many poets, however, the reality is one of inspiration that gives birth to intense manuscript activity and revision. It is now well known that Tennyson revised and re-revised, even after publication, until only weeks before his death; and yet no book-length study has pursued the significance of his manuscript revisions for the development of his style. This thesis traces the poet’s stylistic evolution through his notebooks, drafts, and printed volumes. Uncovering new literary manuscripts from Harvard, Lincoln, Cambridge, and New York, the study offers a more comprehensive picture of the poet’s craft: one alert to his evolving ambitions, and to the immense shifts that he effected in the landscape of English verse. The thesis begins by excavating how the notion of poetic ‘song’ fuelled a creative process at the heart of Tennyson’s revisions. In tracing the diverging fates of ‘lyric’ and ‘song’ across his notebooks, the opening chapter restores an important discourse for Tennysonian sonority that has comparatively declined in recent years. Chapter II examines Tennyson’s aesthetic control over the Victorian lyrical canon, drawing on a new manuscript of ‘The Golden Treasury’, the most significant anthology of the nineteenth century. Chapter III studies the notebook containing Tennyson’s first collection of verse, ‘Poems, by Two Brothers’. It reveals how much of the poor punctuation that sparked vehement attacks – and which is reproduced in modern editions – was not, in fact, inserted by the poet. Chapter IV explores how Tennyson’s most famous early songs and lyrics, published in ‘Poems, Chiefly Lyrical’, developed in tandem with his blank verse style. Chapters V and VI illuminate Tennyson’s ‘ten year silence’, which witnessed profound innovations in form, the revision of his 1832 Poems into his celebrated collection of 1842, and the creation of ‘In Memoriam’. Chapters VII and VIII piece together the notebooks, proofs, drafts, and revision copies of ‘The Princess’, Tennyson’s medley of songs and voices, lyrics and blank verse. By its end, the study reveals how the ringing qualities of his works emerged through manuscript revision: in the interplay between sonorous forms and narratives that came, over decades of change, to shape the distinctive drama of Tennyson’s style.

Notre étude s’attache à cerner les figures du sujet lyrique dans la poésie de Jacques Dupin (1927- 2012), Philippe Jaccottet (1924- ) et Jacques Réda (1928- ), trois écrivains majeurs de l’après-guerre dont le travail poétique a contribué à l’évolution de la poésie lyrique contemporaine. Sans pour autant négliger l’œuvre antérieure et postérieure de ces poètes, notre étude se concentrera principalement sur les ouvrages des années 1960 et 1970. A cette période, en effet, la poésie lyrique s’est trouvée prise dans une situation critique sans précédent du fait l’avènement du structuralisme et du « textualisme » proclamé par l’avant-garde. En réaction au textualisme des années 1960 et 1970, Dupin, Jaccottet et Réda poursuivent une quête opiniâtre du lyrisme. Notre étude n’a pour but ni d’élaborer des critères globaux et universels afin de définir les caractéristiques universelles de la « poésie lyrique » en tant que genre littéraire, ni d’élaborer une réflexion philosophique sur le Sujet ou l’En-soi. A travers l’analyse des figures de sujet lyrique, nous étudierons les caractéristiques de chacun de nos poètes, ainsi que les modes de la poésie lyrique au cours de cette période malaisée. La notion de « sujet lyrique » nous servira de paramètre en vue d’éclairer la singularité et l’historicité des poèmes, voire de la poétique propre à chaque écrivain. Traditionnellement, la poésie lyrique est souvent associée à l’emphase ou au sentimentalisme. La poésie de Dupin, Jaccottet et Réda s’acharnent à se dégager de l’embrasse du lyrisme traditionnel encombré d’égocentrisme. La poésie lyrique n’est plus un genre qui exprime les sentiments et la subjectivité du poète. Nos poètes sont à la recherche d’une nouvelle forme de poésie lyrique, qui convienne à leur époque. L’impersonnalité, que nous trouvons souvent dans leur poétique, s’associe à la production d’une nouvelle modalité de la subjectivité, éloignée de la métaphysique de la subjectivité. Le refus d’une certaine forme de subjectivité coexiste avec la recherche d’une parole singulière, ainsi que d’une nouvelle figure de sujet lyrique. / Our study aims to examine the figures of the lyric subject in the poetry of Jacques Dupin (1927- 2012), Philippe Jaccottet (1924-) and Jacques Réda (1928-), three major poet of the postwar whose poetic work contributed to the evolution of contemporary lyric poetry.Without neglecting the anterior and posterior work of these poets, our study will focus mainly on the works of the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, in fact, the lyric was taken in a critical situation without precedent because of the advent of the structuralism and the “textualism” proclaimed by the avant-garde. In response to textualism of 1960s and 1970s, Dupin, Jaccottet and Réda continue an obstinate search of lyricism.Our study doesn’t aim to develop global and universal criteria to define the universal characteristics of "lyric poetry" as a literary genre, nor to develop a philosophical reflection on the subject or the En-soi. Through the analysis of the figures of lyric subject, we will study the characteristics of each of our poets, as well as patterns of lyric poetry during the difficult period. The notion of "lyric subject" will serve as a parameter in order to clarify the singularity and the historical nature of the poems, and those of the poetic peculiar to each writer.Traditionally, lyric poetry is often associated with the emphasis or sentimentality. The poetry of Dupin, Jaccottet and Reda struggle to free themselves from the traditional lyricism based on the egocentricity. Lyric poetry is no more a genre that expresses the feelings and subjectivity of the poet. Our poets are looking for a new form of lyrical poetry, which is suitable for the times. The impersonality, we often find in their poetic, is associated with the production of a new form of subjectivity, far from the metaphysics of subjectivity. The refusal of some form of subjectivity coexists with the search for a singular word and the new figure of lyric subject.

This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.

Long acknowledged as a committed poet of place, this thesis examines tones of outsiderness and alienation that characterize George Scarbrough’s poetry. Scarbrough draws on familiarity with his childhood in southeast Tennessee, and from an outsider’s outlook, a perspective veritably prompted by the rejection he suffered as a homosexual and lover of language, Scarbrough’s poetry addresses the daunting themes of fear and nothingness. Analysis of his poetry also reveals qualities of hope and endurance, a commitment to received forms, and Modern innovation. Through his poetic voice, culminating in the alter ego of Han-shan, Scarbrough provides vital insights into the human experience.

x, 237 p. / We have too frequently approached American World War II poetry with assumptions about modern poetry based on readings of the influential British Great War poets, failing to distinguish between WWI and WWII and between the British and American contexts. During the Second World War, the Holocaust and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated the line many WWI poems reinforced between the soldier's battlefront and the civilian's homefront, authorizing for the first time both civilian and soldier perspectives. Conditions on the American homefront--widespread isolationist and anti-Semitic attitudes, America's late entry into the war, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese internment, and the African American "Double V Campaign" to fight fascism overseas and racism at home--were just some of the volatile conditions poets in the US grappled with during WWII. In their poems, war shapes and threatens the identities of civilians and soldiers, women and men, African Americans and Jews, and verse form itself becomes a weapon against war's assault on identity. Charles Reznikoff, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Richard Wilbur mobilize and challenge the authority of traditional poetic forms to defend the self against social, political, and physical assaults. The objective, free-verse testimony form of Reznikoff's long poem Holocaust (1975) registers his mistrust of lyric subjectivity and of the musical effects of traditional poetry. In Rukeyser's free-verse and traditional-verse forms, personal experiences and public history collide to create a unifying poetry during wartime. Brooks, like Rukeyser, posits poetry's ability to protect soldiers and civilians from war's threat to their identities. In Brooks's poems, however, only traditionally formal poems can withstand the war's destruction. Wilbur also employs conventional forms to control war's disorder. The individual speakers in his poems avoid becoming nameless war casualties by grounding themselves in military and literary history. Through a series of historically informed close readings, this dissertation illuminates a neglected period in the history of American poetry and argues that mid-century formalism challenges--not retreats from--twentieth-century atrocities. / Committee in charge: Karen Jackson Ford, Chairperson; John Gage, Member; Paul Peppis, Member; Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, Outside Member