Bibliography: pages 242-266. / The general aims of this dissertation are: to study a form of literature traditionally disregarded by a text-bound academy; to argue that form is an important element in ideological analyses of the poetry under discussion; and, on the basis of this second aim, to argue for a comparative, rigorously critical approach to the poetry of Mzwakhe Mbuli. Previous evaluations of Mbuli's poetry are characterised by acclaim which, the author contends, is only possible because of under-researched criticism, representing a general trend in South African literary culture. Compared to Linton Kwesi Johnson's work, for instance, Mbuli's poetry does not emerge as the innovative and progressive art - in both content and form - it is claimed to be. Mbuli and his critics are thus read as a case study of a general trend. Johnson and Mbuli mainly perform their poetry with musical accompaniment and distribute it as sound-recording. This study's approach then differs from the approaches of general oral literature studies because influential writers on oral literature - specifically Walter J. Ong, Ruth Finnegan and Paul Zumthor - do not address the genre under investigation here. Nevertheless, their writings are explored in order to show why particularly Ong and Finnegan's approaches are inadequate. The author argues that using the orality of the poetry as an organising, theoretical principle is insufficient for the task at hand. On cue from Zumthor, this study suggests an approach through Cultural Studies and conceives of the subject matter as popular culture.

Bibliography: pages 217-232. / Yali-Manisi, a Xhosa writer, performs and writes traditional praise poetry (izibongo) and modern poems (isihobe) and can, therefore, be regarded as a bard because he also performs his poetry. One can safely place him in the interphase as he combines performance and writing. The influence of oral poems and other oral genres can be perceived in his works as some of his works are a product of performances which were recorded, transcribed and translated into English. The dissertation, among other things, examines the way in which Yali-Manisi's work has been influenced by such manipulations. In this study we examine lzibongo Zeenkosi ZamaXhosa, lmfazwe kaMianjeni, Yaphum'igqina and other individually recorded poems. His poetry is characterised by an interaction between tradition and innovation. The impact of traditional poetic canon on the poet, the way of exploiting traditional devices are the most outstanding characteristics concerning his poetry. His optimistic disposition towards the future of the South African political situation leaves one with the impression that he envisages an end to the Black-White political dichotomy. Yali-Manisi manipulates literary forms to articulate specific socio-political and cultural attitudes which are dominant among the majority of South Africans. His writings coincide with some of the major political changes in South Africa. In his recent works, he is explicit and protests against Apartheid structures especially in Transkei and Ciskei. In his earlier works he could not articulate the feelings of his people as an imbongi because of the fear of censorship and themes of protests had to be handled with extreme caution if one's manuscripts were to be published at all. He often alludes to national oppression of the majority by the minority and instigates the former to be politically conscious. In some instances (e.g. in his historical poems) he seeks to correct inaccuracies which are presented in history books. Thus showing the listener/reader another side of the coin. He displays very keen interest and deep knowledge of natural phenomena such as seasons of the year and the behaviour of animals during each period. Poems about historical figures are characterised by certain allusions which refer to realities and events in the life of the 'praised one' or his forefathers. This helps to shed light on the present situation. Although fictitious adaptations of genuine events have been done, an element of reality is still prevalent.

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) published short stories, essays, and poetry between 1894 and the time of her death. She published a slim volume of poems in 1916, a few of which place her as one of the great English poets. Indeed, both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf thought her one of the greatest living female poets. Mew is particularly interesting as a poet who was born in the Victorian period, published during the “decadent decade” of the nineties, throughout Edward’s reign, and well into the reign of George V. Although few of Mew’s poems are dated, there is a gradual yet continual change from her early work to her latest. In her work, Mew questions her relationship with God, nature and humanity. She asked questions asked by Emily Bronte, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy. Like them, she was knowledgeable in the new science and believed in its results. She was a seeker for a workable philosophy on which to base her life, which she never fully found. It is both painful and fruitful to join her in her search through her works as she tries to come to terms with these issues.

This dissertation explores Elizabeth Barrett's dependency on the archetypal Victorian patriarch. Chapter I focuses on the psychological effects of this father-daughter relationship on Elizabeth Barrett. Chapter II addresses Barrett's acceptance of the conventional female role, which is suggested by the nature and the situation of the women she chooses to depict. These women are placed in situations where they can reveal their devotion to family, their capacity for passive endurance, and their wish to resist. Almost always, they choose death as an alternative to life where a powerful father figure is present. Chapter III concentrates on the highly sentimental images of women and children whom Barrett places in a divine order, where they exist untouched by the concerns of the social order of which they are a part. Chapter IV shows that the conventional ideologies of the time, society's commitment to the "angel in the house," and the small number of female role models before her increase her difficulty to find herself a place within this order. Chapter V discusses Aurora Leigh's mission to find herself an identity and to maintain the connection with her father or father substitute. Despite Elizabeth Barrett's desire to break away from her paternal ties and to establish herself as an independent woman and poet, her unconditional loyalty and love towards her father and her tremendous need for his affection, and the security he provides restrain her resistance and surface the child in her.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the limits of evidence concerning the biography of the Roman poet Catullus, the texts of his poems, and the earlier poetic influence on his longer works and to compare scholarly opinions about those topics. To attain those objectives, both classical authors and modern scholars were used as sources. This work has five chapters. The first outlines the problems of Catullan scholia. The second and third discuss his life and texts. The fourth and fifth concern Catullus' poetic creed and his borrowings from earlier poets and poetic traditions. This paper's conclusion is that, although no full assessment of the poet can be made without additional evidence, Catullus remains a major poetic figure deserving of additional study.

This thesis is concerned with the establishment of an underlying philosophy for Robert Browning's many themes. It asserts that a notion found in II Corinthians 3:6, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," is basic to ideas such as Browning's belief in the superiority of life over art, of the wisdom of the heart over the intellect, and of honest skepticism over unexamined belief. The sources used to establish this premise are mainly the poems themselves, grouped in categories by subject matter of art, love, and religion. Some of his correspondence is also examined to ascertain how relevant the philosophy was to his own life. The conclusion is that the concept is, indeed, pervasive throughout Browning's poetry and extremely important to the man himself.

This thesis comprises historical and critical introduction to contemporary women's poetry in Ireland and close reading of three poets of its two latest generations, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian and Vona Groarke. It focuses on her perception of nature and attitude to the relationship between the human self and natural processes and objects. The contextual background to my reading emphasizes the feminist critique of the traditional false images of the woman's self in Irish poetry and politics, and suggests new opportunities of the most recent female poetic voices. The culturally rooted simplifying or even harmful connection between femininity and the fertile land or Catholic ideals of virginity has provoked a lot of indignation among contemporary women poets, and caused abundant literary attempts of its re-negotiation. The authentic poetic representation of the woman's sexual and spiritual connection to the land and nature along with women's subjective use of nature imagery belongs to crucial points of this re-negotiation. It is pursued extensively in all of the poetesses discussed in this paper. My close reading considers the political objectives of the poems and notices different modes of their artistic response to the relevant cultural questions. Nevertheless, it emphasizes also the independence...

As the quotation in the title of this thesis indicates, Douglas Livingstone states that unless humankind can learn to live in mutuality with the rest of the natural world, the human race faces extinction. Using the relatively new critical approach of ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism) this thesis explores Livingstone's preoccupation with "symbiosis or death" and shows that the predominant theme in his ecologically-orientated poetry is one of ecological despair. Countering this is a tentative thread of hope. Possible resolution lies in the human capacity to attain compassion and wisdom through the judicious use of science, creativity, the power of art and the power of love. Livingstone's ecological preoccupation is thus informed by the universal themes which have pervaded literature since its recorded beginnings. The first chapter examines the concepts of ecology and literary ecocriticism, followed by a chapter on the life and work of Douglas Livingstone, and a review of the critical response to the five collections of poetry which predate A Littoral Zone, his final work. The remaining four chapters offer an analysis of his ecologically-orientated poetry, with the majority of the space given to an examination of A Littoral Zone. The following ecological themes are used in the analysis of the poems: evolutionary theory, humankind's relationship to nature, ecological equilibrium, and ecological destruction. The latter two themes are shown to represent Livingstone's view of the ideal and the real, or the opposites of hope and despair. The analysis interweaves an argument with the existing critical response to this collection. This thesis demonstrates that Livingstone's crucial message – the need for humankind to attain ecological sensibility or “the knowledge of right living” (Ellen Swallow) and so obviate its certain extinction – has largely been ignored in previous critical works.

This dissertation examines the importance of the concept of measurement to poets and literary critics in eighteenth-century England. It documents attempts to measure aspects of literary form, especially prosodic phenomena such as meter and rhythm, and it explores how these empirical and pseudo-empirical experiments influenced the writing and reading of poetry. During the Enlightenment, it argues, poets and critics were particularly drawn to prosody's apparent objectivity: through the parsing of lines and counting of syllables, prosody seemed to allow one to isolate and quite literally measure the beauty and significance of verse. Inquiries into the social and historical functions of literature routinely relied on this discourse, exploring questions of style, politics, and philosophy with the help of prosodic measurement. By drawing on works and artifacts ranging from dictionaries and grammars to mnemonic schemes and notional verse-making machines, and through close readings of poet-critics such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and Samuel Johnson, "Poetic Numbers" contends that the eighteenth century's fascination with prosody represents a foundational moment in the history of literary criticism: a moment whose acute self-consciousness about literary critical methods, as well as about whether and how these methods can aspire to count and account for aspects of literary experience, anticipates many of the methodological questions that mark our own time.

This study focuses on the works of three authors whose first poetry books appeared in the 1970s, in the context of the dictatorial and authoritarian regimes that began seizing power in Latin America in the 1960s and '70s. At a juncture in which both traditional leftist discourse and the programs of earlier avant-gardes had begun to seem inadequate, younger poets sought to articulate, in the realm of the symbolic, coherent responses to increasingly oppressive and polarized political environments. The works in question are the following: Brazilian Waly Salomão's "Me segura qu'eu vou dar um troço" (Rio de Janeiro, 1972); Juan Luis Martínez's "La nueva novela" (Santiago, Chile, 1977); and, by Mexican conceptual artist Ulises Carrión, the unpublished "Poesías," from 1973, as well as a selection of his poetry-based artists books. These are hyper-referential, process-oriented, polyphonic works. They are not only politically motivated, but, given their understanding of the entwinement of politics and genre, are also decidedly against the ideology bolstering the lettered tradition, lyrical poetry, and self-expressive tendencies. At the core of their critique is a rejection of an economy of meaning in which the author's function, as Foucault puts it, equals "the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning." First and foremost, in their goal to burst open the meaning-making process, Salomão, Martínez, and Carrión disembody the utterance and question notions of literary value that set apart literary language from common speech. Relying heavily on appropriation and framing devices, they each posit an alternate model of authorship in which writing and reading are inextricable and, consequently, the work is co-created by the reader. Key among their strategies is that of acousmatics--here understood as the concealment of the source of the utterances in the text--in order to, primarily, create conditions of reception in which the reader can interact with the material on the page directly, without its being mediated by the poem's subject. Salomão, Martínez, and Carrión each achieve the uttering subject's removal from the text through different procedures that are contrasted in the dissertation. Emulating the cacophony of popular culture, Salomão performatively adopts multiple subjectivities in his works, saturating them to the point that no unitary subject can be said to be manifest in them. Martínez, on the other hand, mirrors the cacophony of printed matter. Besides failing to attribute the copious materials he samples in the wide-ranging word/image works comprising "La nueva novela," in presenting them he adopts the depersonalized institutional tone of textbooks, photographic captions, and paratextual materials such as footnotes, editor's notes, and bibliographical annotations. In Carrión's works the subject seems to have vacated the poem entirely, as author function is reduced to misreading canonical materials and performing interventions and erasures on them. Resulting from Carrión's operations are open structures that serve as models for post-literary ways to engage with texts. The way these authors assembled and put their books in circulation is also examined, since "Me segura qu'eu vou dar um troço," "La nueva novela," and Carrión's artist books are the result of a thorough rethinking of the politics of the book, the lettered tradition's keystone institution.