Thesis--Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Philipps-Universität zu Marburg, 1929. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [5]).

The first Part of the dissertation examines in some detail the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. A chronological approach is used, but what is most stressed is the thematic unity of all MacDiarmid’s work, from such early poems as A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (of which a detailed exegesis is presented) through the poems of the '30s to the long "world-view" poems such as In Memoriam James Joyce. This unity is to be found principally in MacDiarmid’s attitude towards Evolution, and his view of the evolutionary development of the human mind. Within this context, the apparent paradoxes and confusions of MacDiarmid's political, social, and aesthetic views may be reconciled. Although mainly concerned with the ideas contained in MacDiarmid's poetry, the dissertation also attempts to describe and to defend the changing stylistic means by which these ideas are presented, especially with regard to the very "prosaic" nature of the later poems. Part Two examines the work of four leading poets of the Scottish Renaissance. Sydney Goodsir Smith's poetry is discussed in terms of its main themes of love and politics, and their partial reconciliation in poems dealing with the figure of the outsider. Particularly close attention is given to the poem-sequence Under the Eildon Tree. The discussion of Robert Garioch relates his work as a translator of poetry to his work as an original poet, dealing especially with his poems about Edinburgh, and with the relation of his humorous to his more serious work. The section on Norman MacCaig analyses his attitudes towards nature, and the means of perceiving external nature, especially the poetic perception through metaphor. The results of MacCaig's recent shift to free verse are also treated. Iain Crichton Smith's poetry is viewed as a system of dualities, perhaps best summed up in the title of one of his books, The Law and the Grace; the discussion closes with a detailed analysis of the one poem, Deer on the High Hills, in which these dualities are (tentatively) reconciled. The final Part of the dissertation opens with an account of the history and theoretical basis of the experimental Concrete Poetry movement, and then examines the contributions to this movement of two Scots poets, Edwin Morgan and Ian Hamilton Finlay. Finlay’s work is examined in detail, not only for its extraordinary inventiveness of technique, but also for the very positive values of it’s attitudes, themes, and imagery. Particular attention is given to the theme of fishing-boats and the sea in Finlay's work. This section is not merely a defence of Finlay's technical procedures, but an assertion of his greatness as a poet. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

This thesis is a comprehensive study of the poetry of Norman MacCaig. His poems have received relatively little critical attention and scholars appear to have concentrated on a few specific points such as MacCaig’s characteristic restraint or his inscription in a given literary tradition. Critics have notably pointed out different dichotomies in his works. I argue that these dichotomies are fundamentally interrelated. It is characteristic of MacCaig’s writing to simultaneously engage with and challenge philosophical and linguistic concepts and positions as well as literary traditions and stylistic choices. These dichotomies are both a cause and a symptom of this phenomenon. They take on a structuring role in a body of works often regarded as a collection of independent lyrics rather than a cohesive totality. The first half of the thesis will follow a thematic approach: considering first the poetic project MacCaig outlines and the interplay of celebration, faithfulness to the object and the problem of perception; then the treatment of religion and the divine by this notoriously atheist author and how it relates to his worldview. This will provide a basis to address MacCaig’s lifelong concern with the relationship between perception, language and description and what this entails for both his writing and his philosophical positions. In the second half of this study, I will address MacCaig’s engagement with tradition – and its limits – through consideration of three different modes and how they relate to his writing project: elegy, pastoral and amatory verse, regarding the latter two as specific examples of the former. Through these interconnected studies of MacCaig’s poetry, I argue that the critical tendency to either undervalue his central place or treat his works in a fragmentary fashion originates in MacCaig’s sense of the instability of our perceptions and our possible discourses about the world. This uncertainty at the root of his writing reflects his constant and often uncomfortable awareness of the elusive nature of existence and meaning – death and the limits of language threatening both his perception of the world he evinces such fondness for and his ability to write about it.

No description available.

This thesis investigates aspects of the writing, reading, and marketing of contemporary Scottish poetry, suggesting that readers of contemporary poetry are influenced in their reading by marketplace forces as well as by their early academic training. The thesis attempts to reflect this combination of influences on the reader, but it also seeks to reflect the awareness of these influences in the poets' work. The Dream State concentrates on factors which condition the reading of contemporary Scottish poetry, and on some of the poetry of seven poets who became established in the 1990s: John Burnside, Robert Crawford, W. N. Herbert, Tracey Herd, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Robin Robertson. Alert to the political climate of Scottish devolution and to a literary climate which saw the simultaneous appearance of the anthology Dream State: The New Scottish Poets and the 1994 New Generation poetry promotion, the thesis examines the pressures of expectation on these Scottish poets writing in English and Scots during the 1990s. The thesis argues that the complexity of their poems and jobs as poets in this period is best understood by 'thinking together' (Steven Connor) the principles of Practical Criticism and publishing history's approach to literature in the marketplace; I draw on research fi-om a combination of critical sources in literary theory and criticism, book history and interviews/correspondence with poets, teachers and the booktrade. Chapters describing critical narratives which can pre-empt reading - the theoretical spaces of contemporary Scottish poetry, the origins of Practical Criticism, and academic/commercial expectations of the reader - are followed by chapters on the work of these seven poets. Chapter 4 examines longer poems as a reflection of the poets' concerns about personal and national identity, and Chapter 5 discusses the poets' exploration of their social and literary environments. The Conclusion discusses the significance of what I term the museum poem and of anthologies of twentieth-century Scottish poetry, drawing on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project for an appropriate model of contemporary reading.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Eric Walker, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 17, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

As Elizabeth Burns’s paradoxical phrase ‘the thin universe’ suggests, the home is a place of both limitations and possibilities. Domestic life has been regarded by some as a spirit-sapping hindrance to creativity, recalling Cyril Connolly’s famous declaration that: ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.’ This thesis examines the ways in which Burns, Herd and Jamie demonstrate how domestic life, for all its restrictions, can prove to be the ally of art. The home is a repository for childhood memories – shown in my analysis of Burns’s ‘Rummers and Ladels’ and Jamie’s ‘Forget It’ – and it is during this formative period that our ambivalent relationship with the home begins. The desire for comfort and safety can be felt alongside the tug towards the outdoor world of adventure and independence, a push-pull longing found in Herd’s ‘Big Girls’. Herd carries this longing into adulthood in ‘A Letter From Anna’, as does Burns in ‘Woman Reading a Letter, 1662’, and Jamie in ‘Royal Family Doulton’. Section one is my examination of this complicated sensation. The darkness that can make the home a hell features in Burns’s ‘Poem of the Alcoholic’s Wife’, Herd’s ‘Soap Queen’ and Jamie’s ‘Wee Wifey’. Contrastingly, the blissful events that take place there are evoked in Burns’s ‘The Curtain’, Herd’s ‘Rosery’ and Jamie’s ‘Thaw’. In section two I seek to prove that such extreme events, from the abuse suffered at the hands of an unfeeling mother to the delights of new parenthood, prove that the home cannot be dismissed as sequestered or mundane. And yet, dismissed it has been. Why bother depicting one’s ‘wretched vegetable home existence’, as Wyndham Lewis wrote, when one could ‘give expression to the more energetic part of that City man’s life’? Burns bemoans this attitude in ‘Work and Art/We are building a civilization’, and the idea that ‘home crafts’ like embroidery cannot be miraculous in themselves is dispelled by Herd’s ‘The Siege’ and Jamie’s ‘St Bride’s’. The celebration of the domestic interior found in paintings by, for example, David Hockney and Gwen John is similarly seen in the poetry of Burns (‘Annunciation’), Herd (‘Memoirs’) and Jamie (‘Song of Sunday’). Section three aims to show how the Bugaboo in the hall can be the ally of art, and – ‘thin’ though it may sometimes feel – the home is a universe in which infinite poetic possibilities exist.