The early twentieth-century avant-garde has cast a long shadow over the popular imagination as producers of manifestos, public scandals, and some of the most enduring art and literature of the last century. In this study, I examine the works of three poets who are not only considered leading avant-gardists, but who are foundational to how both popular consciousness and academic scholarship have understood the avant-garde’s theory and practice: Guillaume Apollinaire, F. T. Marinetti, and Ezra Pound. In particular, this study focuses on the recurring themes of prophecy and apocalypse in their work. These themes occur through reference to prophetic and apocalyptic literary or mythical figures, but also through stylistic innovations such as the use of literary personae or the attempt to synthesise diverse artistic forms. Focusing on these themes allows this study to re-engage the question of how these poets, and the avant-garde more broadly, regarded their practice as a social act. Using a comparative methodology in this thesis, prophecy is viewed not simply as a declamatory literary style that foretells the future, but as a particular kind of social relationship to an audience that is at turns mutually supportive and antagonistic. Similarly, apocalyptic thought is presented not merely as an expectation or belief in the end of the world, but as a specific method of imagining a new world that is, in spite of itself, dependent upon the social world of the present. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound were major figures in the so-called ‘Pre-war Avant-Garde’ having established their reputations in the decade prior to World War I. While they each began formulating and proclaiming their views on aesthetics prior to the war, the experience of war had a profound impact on all three. Accordingly, this thesis examines a number of poems from Apollinaire’s two major collections: Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), the latter containing significant reflections on avant-gardism and war. Marinetti acted as a journalist in the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912, which inspired the work central to this study: his Futurist novel-in-verse Le Monoplan du Pape (1912). Pound, unlike Apollinaire and Marinetti, did not participate in World War I, and this study explores his sequence Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), a long rumination on art, war, and his engagement with Imagism and Vorticism, but also analyses poems from his collections Personae (1908), Ripostes (1912), and Lustra (1916). This study examines how the acute crisis of the war pressed each of these poets to reconsider their view of the poet-as-prophet in society. In doing so it explores the ethical or political implications of avant-garde aesthetics influenced by and as a response to war. This study also closely compares these poets’ works to the biblical literature from which they frequently derived prophetic and apocalyptic themes. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound’s relationship to religion, particularly Christianity, spanned from ambivalence to hostility, but they each engage biblical literature in unique and unorthodox ways. While these poets all sought to be identifiably modern, this study demonstrates the ways in which they attempted to recover values from biblical literature that each felt was necessary to establish the independence and autonomy of contemporary art and literature. Therefore, this study’s comparative framework is intended to engage the conversation over the spiritual, religious, or transcendent values to which avant-garde art aspired. And drawing significantly from the social theories of art, religion, and culture developed by Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, this thesis contributes to the study of avant-gardism as a social, as well as aesthetic, phenomenon.

No description available.

Thesis--Universität Göttingen. / Bibliogr. p. 287-310.

As innovative as his sculpture, Andre's visually oriented poetry, however, has yet to receive the same rigor of attention as his sculpture. His inventive use of poetic and visual form, which he described as poetry mapped onto the visual arts, provides a compelling example of the interrelationship of word and image, a practice, although often overlooked, that suffuses twentieth-century visual art and poetry. Whereas Andre produced approximately 1,500 poems over many decades, this project focuses on his Words installation, the largest permanently installed collection of Andre's poems in the world. In 1995, Andre gifted 465 pages of poetry to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Andre's experiments with genre, including lyrics, autobiographies, novels, odes, and operas, push literary convention to the edge of irreconcilability. Despite the array of genres, I argue that all of the disparate kinds of writing found in Words demonstrate Andre's poetic sensibility. Until recently the critical discussion of Andre's poems proceeded as a one-sided discourse, which advanced the notion that this large body of work was best suited to enhancing the understanding of Andre's sculptural practice. To redress the one-sidedness of the discourse requires approaching Andre not only as a sculptor who made poems, but also as a poet deeply engaged in the visual qualities of his poetics. Engaging the spirit of the "make it new" sensibility of modernist poetics, Andre developed his own practice by "mapping language on the conventions and usages of 20thcentury abstract art."¹ Andre's poetry operates in the space between art and language. In this space we find Andre's engagement with poetic history, particularly the innovations of Ezra Pound, his relationship to important poetic developments such as fragmentation and quotation, and his experimentation with poetry as a visual medium. An examination of Andre's poetic oeuvre, the publication and exhibition history of his poems, and the manner of critical attention given to the poems from the 1960s onward contextualizes Andre's practice of mapping poetry onto the visual arts, while also bridging the gap in discourse between the fields of art and poetry. / text

E.E. Cummings' modernist poetry roots itself in nature. That it has not received overt ecosemiotic ("ecocritical") attention is surprising. This thesis reads Cummings' poetic oeuvre as found in his Complete Poems (1994) with a view to its ecological (whole, naturally interpenetrating) scope and dynamics. It builds upon existing criticism of Cummings' natural view and nature poetry (Norman Friedman). Although it mainly adheres to a close reading of the poems themselves, it also makes use of secondary sources such as Cummings' prose, notes, painting, and letters, in support of the ecological argument. It also draws from a broad basis of sources including various strands of ecological discourse: especially "ecocriticism" (William Howarth) as well as cultural ecology, deep ecology, and -- on an interdisciplinary basis -- ecology proper (Michael Begon). The thesis incorporates texts on modernist orientalism (Eric Hayot) since it argues that Cummings' ecology and his unique version of Taoism radically inform one another. Because relatively few sources exist that relate modernist poetry to nature (Robert Langbaum) the thesis consults a variety of modernist criticisms (Jewel Spears Brooker) with a view to the relations between the modernist sign and its outside natural context. Drawing upon sources further a field (Umberto Eco) the thesis offers a theoretical overview of the complication of natural context in the modem mindset as found in mainstream modernist discourse, structuralism (A.J. Greimas), and post-structuralism (Jacques Derrida). Amounting to a "semiotic fallacy", such a broad semiotic complication of sign-nature relations accentuates the importance of Cummings' poetry which remains at once modern and deeply connected to nature. Against this broad background, and in exploration of a zone of between-ness -- between opposites such as culture versus nature and East versus West -- Cummings' poetry is read hermeneutically to infer its various ecological dynamics. The main questions that the thesis examines are: What is the scope of Cummings' poetic ecology? What are its dynamics? How did critics respond to it? What reciprocal light does it shed on the poetic ecologies of the mainstream modernist poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound? The thesis demonstrates that the extent of Cummings' poetic ecology is considerable: it involves his various poetic categories (such as lyricism, satire, and visual-verbal poems) from early to late in his career, as well as a gradual Taoist crisis in his development (more or less from the 1930s to the 1950s). A sequence of ecological dynamics from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching are applied to Cummings' poetry, including humility (smallness and earthiness), flexibility (an osmotic semiosis), serendipity (or synchronicity), a singular ideogrammatic style (Nina Hellerstein), iconicity (Michael Webster), an open-ended cross-stitching of oppositional expectations, and "flow" or signs that open out contextualizing possibilities faster than the reader can close them down. As the thesis further shows, these dynamics ultimately centre on Cummings' third dimension or voice beyond static and entrenched opposites of the relational and oppositional mind. The exploration concludes with a concise examination of additional instances of the third voice such as a yin tendency (restoration of femaleness), followed by an ecosemiotic analysis of two key ecological poems, the leaf poem (“l(a”) and the hummingbird poem (“I/ never"). The latter acts as an osmotic mandala that carries the modernist sign into active and complete earth, with the reader acting as the creative and collaborating intermediary. The focus then shifts to the critical reception of this poetic ecology, and finds that influential critics (R.P. Blackmur) tended to misappropriate it as a form of non-intellectuality. For example, Cummings' ecological flexibility was perceived as childish sentimentality. The boundaries of Cummings' poetry were perceived not to be "hardened" or "objective" enough. These receptions were based on a particular mainstream modernist view of the intellect, informed by Eliot's objectified and ambivalent early stance. Due to this, critics tended to overlook or dismiss that central value of Cummings' poetry -- its ecology -- in favour of a more predominant and dualistic alienation from and even cynicism towards natural integrity. These in-depth revisitations reveal that Cummings' major minor status embodies an ecological achievement: his poetry managed to move between and beyond the overall dualistic mainstream modernist ecological dilemma that is marked by the major versus minor categorization. Based on this thorough exploration of the elusive ecological dynamism of Cummings' poetry and its critical reception, the thesis turns its focus to Eliot's and Pound's poetry. The early, major works such as The Waste Land (1922) are read from the perspective of Cummings' poetic ecology, informed by the knowledge that a deep-seated double-ness towards ecology would be expected in these major works. An analysis of the mainstream modernist objectification of the sign with its concomitant and sealed-off alienation from its outside context and nature follows - the focus is on selected texts such as "Prufrock", "Tradition and the Individual Talent", and the Cantos. Eliot's and Pound's respective searches for and achievements of a third voice are subsequently examined, as found (for example) in the DA sequence of The Waste Land, 'The Idea of a Christian Society", the Four Quartets, Cathay, and the "Pisan Cantos". Centring on this prevalent and underemphasized third voice, the thesis posits an ecological reconfiguration of Cummings', Eliot's, and Pound's respective modernist projects. It demonstrates that Cummings' poetic ecology is central to the other two poets in terms of this voice. In provisional conclusion the thesis calls for a critical shift towards a more intense engagement with "smaller" modernist poetries such as Cummings', with a view to an increasing understanding of the ubiquitous, complex, and sometimes complicating "green" layer of the modernist poetic palimpsest. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003.

In this thesis I argue against the conventionally held belief that collage as a form is defined through the mutual differences existing between the inserted material fragment and those signifiers that surround it. Examining works by Pablo Picasso and then turning my attention to Ezra Pound's Cantos, I seek to establish, within the related frameworks of visual and verbal collage respectively, a structural model of these and other such works predicated upon the continuity, not the distinctiveness, of fragment and host-text. Collage, I hope to show, is necessarily organic in structure due to the unstable nature of the linguistic sign, a phenomenon of language that informs the thesis from beginning to end. Ultimately, I aim to present this model as a metaphor for perception generally, as both a delineation and demonstration of the way in which one comes to know the world.

E.E. Cummings' modernist poetry roots itself in nature. That it has not received overt ecosemiotic ("ecocritical") attention is surprising. This thesis reads Cummings' poetic oeuvre as found in his Complete Poems (1994) with a view to its ecological (whole, naturally interpenetrating) scope and dynamics. It builds upon existing criticism of Cummings' natural view and nature poetry (Norman Friedman). Although it mainly adheres to a close reading of the poems themselves, it also makes use of secondary sources such as Cummings' prose, notes, painting, and letters, in support of the ecological argument. It also draws from a broad basis of sources including various strands of ecological discourse: especially "ecocriticism" (William Howarth) as well as cultural ecology, deep ecology, and -- on an interdisciplinary basis -- ecology proper (Michael Begon). The thesis incorporates texts on modernist orientalism (Eric Hayot) since it argues that Cummings' ecology and his unique version of Taoism radically inform one another. Because relatively few sources exist that relate modernist poetry to nature (Robert Langbaum) the thesis consults a variety of modernist criticisms (Jewel Spears Brooker) with a view to the relations between the modernist sign and its outside natural context. Drawing upon sources further a field (Umberto Eco) the thesis offers a theoretical overview of the complication of natural context in the modem mindset as found in mainstream modernist discourse, structuralism (A.J. Greimas), and post-structuralism (Jacques Derrida). Amounting to a "semiotic fallacy", such a broad semiotic complication of sign-nature relations accentuates the importance of Cummings' poetry which remains at once modern and deeply connected to nature. Against this broad background, and in exploration of a zone of between-ness -- between opposites such as culture versus nature and East versus West -- Cummings' poetry is read hermeneutically to infer its various ecological dynamics. The main questions that the thesis examines are: What is the scope of Cummings' poetic ecology? What are its dynamics? How did critics respond to it? What reciprocal light does it shed on the poetic ecologies of the mainstream modernist poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound? The thesis demonstrates that the extent of Cummings' poetic ecology is considerable: it involves his various poetic categories (such as lyricism, satire, and visual-verbal poems) from early to late in his career, as well as a gradual Taoist crisis in his development (more or less from the 1930s to the 1950s). A sequence of ecological dynamics from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching are applied to Cummings' poetry, including humility (smallness and earthiness), flexibility (an osmotic semiosis), serendipity (or synchronicity), a singular ideogrammatic style (Nina Hellerstein), iconicity (Michael Webster), an open-ended cross-stitching of oppositional expectations, and "flow" or signs that open out contextualizing possibilities faster than the reader can close them down. As the thesis further shows, these dynamics ultimately centre on Cummings' third dimension or voice beyond static and entrenched opposites of the relational and oppositional mind. The exploration concludes with a concise examination of additional instances of the third voice such as a yin tendency (restoration of femaleness), followed by an ecosemiotic analysis of two key ecological poems, the leaf poem (“l(a”) and the hummingbird poem (“I/ never"). The latter acts as an osmotic mandala that carries the modernist sign into active and complete earth, with the reader acting as the creative and collaborating intermediary. The focus then shifts to the critical reception of this poetic ecology, and finds that influential critics (R.P. Blackmur) tended to misappropriate it as a form of non-intellectuality. For example, Cummings' ecological flexibility was perceived as childish sentimentality. The boundaries of Cummings' poetry were perceived not to be "hardened" or "objective" enough. These receptions were based on a particular mainstream modernist view of the intellect, informed by Eliot's objectified and ambivalent early stance. Due to this, critics tended to overlook or dismiss that central value of Cummings' poetry -- its ecology -- in favour of a more predominant and dualistic alienation from and even cynicism towards natural integrity. These in-depth revisitations reveal that Cummings' major minor status embodies an ecological achievement: his poetry managed to move between and beyond the overall dualistic mainstream modernist ecological dilemma that is marked by the major versus minor categorization. Based on this thorough exploration of the elusive ecological dynamism of Cummings' poetry and its critical reception, the thesis turns its focus to Eliot's and Pound's poetry. The early, major works such as The Waste Land (1922) are read from the perspective of Cummings' poetic ecology, informed by the knowledge that a deep-seated double-ness towards ecology would be expected in these major works. An analysis of the mainstream modernist objectification of the sign with its concomitant and sealed-off alienation from its outside context and nature follows - the focus is on selected texts such as "Prufrock", "Tradition and the Individual Talent", and the Cantos. Eliot's and Pound's respective searches for and achievements of a third voice are subsequently examined, as found (for example) in the DA sequence of The Waste Land, 'The Idea of a Christian Society", the Four Quartets, Cathay, and the "Pisan Cantos". Centring on this prevalent and underemphasized third voice, the thesis posits an ecological reconfiguration of Cummings', Eliot's, and Pound's respective modernist projects. It demonstrates that Cummings' poetic ecology is central to the other two poets in terms of this voice. In provisional conclusion the thesis calls for a critical shift towards a more intense engagement with "smaller" modernist poetries such as Cummings', with a view to an increasing understanding of the ubiquitous, complex, and sometimes complicating "green" layer of the modernist poetic palimpsest. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2006. / Title from title screen (viewed 19 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2006; thesis submitted 2005. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1998. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-254).

Diss.--Heidelberg--Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, 1992.