This dissertation examines Lennart Sjögren’s conception of life as revealed through his poetry and other written documents. Light is shed on his writings in three chapters, with an Introduction that opens the investigations, and a Conclusion that sums up the findings. His collection of poetry Ur männisovärlden (2008, From the world of the living) is commented upon in an epilogue. Chapter Two analyses the collection Havet (1974, The Sea), focussing on Sjögren’s view of nature and his imagery. A religious tone can be apparent throughout the poems. In earlier centuries, poems about migratory birds often gained in authenticity via their Christian context. In a secularised age, ecological insights add to the credibility of the poems. Chapter Three is an analysis and interpretation of Sjögren’s collection of poems Fågeljägarna (1997, The Bird Catchers), as well as of the intra- and intertexts that the reader meets in his writings and that, for various reasons, serve to make Sjögren’s poetic voice so distinctive. In a series of subsections the uniqueness of Fågeljägarna is defined by means of a comparison with ecology, secularisation (secularism), nihilism, religion and mythology. In addition, there is a discussion of the “poetry of place” and a final analysis of what unites and divides Sjögren and K. E. Løgstrup, regarding a poetic understanding of life. Independent of the ideological direction that is identi-fied, this cycle of poems is marked by an elegiac mood. The poem “Dagen före plöjarens kväll” (1984, “The Day before the Plough-man’s Evening”) from the eponymous collection of poems is an example of an ekphrasis (a transformation of images). Chapter Four makes a close reading of this poem, for which Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s picture “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” is a model. Four interpretative hypotheses are advanced: a moral, ontological, theological and a folkloristic one. The interpretation of the poem points out that the dialogue is not merely the poet’s private affair – the reader is also invited to take an active part in the discussion, now with the picture and the ekphrasis as prerequisites. The chapter contains a further three analyses of ekphrasis dealing with other poems from the collection Dagen före plöjarens kväll.

The early- to mid-twentieth century criticism surrounding E. E. Cummings often dismisses his poetry in Eliotic terms. In analyzing Cummings’s critics’ arguments and methodologies, I attempt to reveal the ways in which Cummings has been unfairly labelled, and also the strains in modernist criticism that have continued up through to today. I compare the modernist approaches to the text to the way recent critics talk about Cummings in order to shed light on our critical inheritance from modernism. Finally, I analyse Cummings’s poetry in terms of one of the more recent discussions of modernist texts, that of relationship between commodity and advertising culture and modernist poetry. My project seeks, by using Cummings as a case study, to articulate not only how certain literary values came to be established, but also how certain methods of persuasion in literary criticism can undermine and even silence certain aspects of a text.

This study examines the work Catimbó, written by Ascenso Ferreira (1895-1965), seeing it, especially as a poetic expression of the northeast popular culture, observing the affinities that the poetic diction of this pernambucano author remained with the modernists precepts of the 1922 Modern Art Week. The first chapter describes the cultural environment in Recife, noticing some socio-economic aspects that marked the region; examines the way the paulista modernism arrives to Pernambuco and, simultaneously, the intensification of regionalist´s ideas. Still in this first chapter, we begin the reading of poems ("Desespero", "A casa-grande de Megaípe", "Noturno", "O Samba", "História pátria", "Catimbó", "Minha terra", "Dor" and "Sertão") by Ascenso Ferreira, showing how the Pernambucana culture is poetized by the author of Catimbó. In the second chapter we considered Ascenso Ferreira as a regionalist-modernist poet, showing how the pernambucano has joined the stylistic innovation of modernism to the recovery of the traditions of his land, through the poems "Os engenhos da minha terra", "Tradição", "Vamos embora, Maria", "Quadrilha de Caetano Norato", "A pega do boi", "A rua do rio", "Graf Zeppelin", "O meu poema de São Francisco" and "Oropa, França e Bahia". In the third chapter, we point to Catimbó as a book thematically linked especially to popular culture, presenting the reading of poems of this book that deal poetically with the nordestinidade ascensiana through verses which reveal the cultural components of his land and its people, as "A cavalhada", "Carnaval do Recife", "Meu carnaval", "Senhor São João", "Natal", "Mês de Maio", "Reisado", "Bumba-meu-boi" and "Maracatu". / Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas / Este estudo examina a obra Catimbó, de Ascenso Ferreira (1895-1965), vendo-a, sobretudo, como uma expressão poética da cultura popular nordestina, observando as afinidades que a dicção poética do autor pernambucano manteve com os preceitos modernistas da Semana de 22. O primeiro capítulo descreve o ambiente cultural Recifense, verificando alguns aspectos socioeconômicos que marcaram a região; examina o modo como o Modernismo paulista chega a Pernambuco e, simultaneamente, a intensificação das ideias regionalistas. Ainda neste primeiro capítulo, iniciamos a leitura de poemas (“Desespero”, “A casa-grande de Megaípe”, “Noturno”, “O samba”, “História pátria”, “Catimbó”, “Minha terra”, “Dor” e “Sertão”) de Ascenso Ferreira, mostrando como a cultura pernambucana é poetizada pelo autor de Catimbó. No segundo capítulo consideramos Ascenso Ferreira como um poeta regionalista-modernista, mostrando como o pernambucano uniu a inovação estilística do modernismo à valorização das tradições de sua terra, através dos poemas “Os engenhos de minha terra”, “Tradição”, “Vamos embora, Maria”, “Quadrilha de Caetano Norato”, “A pega do boi”, “A rua do rio”, “Graf Zeppelin”, “O meu poema de São Francisco” e “Oropa, França e Bahia”. No terceiro capítulo, apontamos para Catimbó como o livro de temática ligada especialmente à cultura popular, apresentando a leitura de poemas deste livro que tratam poeticamente a nordestinidade ascensiana através de versos que revelam os componentes culturais de sua terra e do seu povo, como “A cavalhada”, “Carnaval do Recife”, “Meu carnaval”, “Senhor São João”, “Natal”, “Mês de maio”, “Reisado”, “Bumba-meu-boi” e “Maracatu”.

A dissertação trata de Pau Brasil, de Oswald de Andrade, e Feuilles de Route: I. Le Formose e II. Sao-Paulo, de Blaise Cendrars, e pretende verificar como a cidade de São Paulo - em sua condição particular no contexto da modernidade brasileira - é transformada em matéria poética nessas obras. Em contraponto aos elementos do cosmopolitismo da metrópole, apresenta-se a vida rural no ambiente das fazendas do interior do Estado. Com base na análise das obras, procuro avaliar a poética dos autores em suas relações com a metrópole, considerando ainda temáticas associadas a outras questões da modernidade, como o progresso x a natureza e o tema da viagem. Na recomposição dos projetos poéticos dos autores nas obras estudadas, os desenhos elaborados por Tarsila do Amaral para ambas produções poéticas serão considerados como um ponto-chave. / This dissertation examines Oswald de Andrade´s Pau Brasil, and Blaise Cendrars´ Feuilles de Route: I. Le Formose and II. Sao-Paulo, and intents to verify how São Paulo has been - in its particular condition in the context of Brazilian modernity - transformed in poetic subject in these works. In contrast to the elements of metropolis´ cosmopolitism, presents the rural life in inner state farms. Based on work analysis, I attempt to evaluate the authors´ poetic in their relationship with the metropolis, considering also a subject matter associated to other modernity issues, like progress x nature and the travelling theme. In rearrangement of poetic projects from the authors in the studied works, the drawings created by Tarsila do Amaral for both poetic produtions are considered key-points.

Despite having a rather weak family connection to Ireland, the American modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) described herself in a letter to Ezra Pound in 1919 as ‘Irish by descent’. This thesis relates Moore’s claim of Irish descent to her career as a publisher, poet and playwright, and argues that her decision to shape an Irish inheritance for herself was linked with her self-identification as an American poet. Chapter 1 discusses Moore’s self-confessed susceptibility to ‘Irish magic’ in relation to the increase in contributions from Irish writers during her editorship of The Dial magazine from 1925 to 1929. Moore’s 1915 poems to the Irish writers George Moore, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, which reveal a paradoxical desire for affiliation to, and disassociation from, Irish literary traditions, are scrutinized in Chapter 2. Chapters 3a and b discuss Moore’s ‘Irish’ poems ‘Sojourn in the Whale’ (1917) and ‘Spenser’s Ireland’ (1941). In both poems political events in Ireland – the ‘Easter Rising’ of 1916 and Ireland’s policy of neutrality during World War II – become a backdrop for Moore’s personal anxieties as an American poet of ‘Irish’ descent coming to terms with her political and cultural inheritance. Expanding upon previous chapters’ discussion of the interrelation of poetics and politics, Chapter 4 shows how Moore’s use of Irish sources in ‘Spenser’s Ireland’ and other poems including ‘Silence’ and the ‘Student’ reflects her quixotic attitude to Irish culture as alternately an inspiration and a tool for manipulation. The final chapter discusses Moore’s adaptation of the Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth’s 1812 novel The Absentee as a play in 1954. Through this last piece of ‘Irish’ writing, Moore adopts a sentimentality that befits the later stages of her career and illustrates how Irish literature, rather than Irish politics, has emerged as her ultimate source of inspiration.

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