Thesis (M.A.) in English--University of Maine, 2003. / Includes vita.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis aims to provide the first complete study of the poetics of Pierre Reverdy, who, although famous and influential during his lifetime, has not been widely published or researched. This thesis hopes to change this, as his complete works are just now being republished. The first chapter lays the basis for his conception of reality as something in which man is trapped, and which calls for a distance that, in Reverdy's eyes, only poetry can offer. His association of the image and lyricism, is presented and analysed. The second chapter aims to provide a linguistic understanding of the poetic image called for and devises the new concept of “illumination”, to give an account of the phenomenon at work in his verse. The third chapter focuses on lyricism, as Reverdy tries to reinvent it for the twentieth century: independent of the self, dealing only with expressing the affective tonalities of the poet and acting as a catalyst for the image. The last chapter defines the visual qualities of Reverdy's poetry by first re-examining the title of cubist poet that had been attached to him, before focussing on the many forms that the image takes in his work (imagery, but also typography, mental imagery), and finally providing the first analysis of the relationship between paintings and poems in the famous Livres d'artistes that the poet created, in collaboration with Picasso, Matisse, Juan Gris and others. It establishes that while the poems can indeed be read without the illustrations with which they were conceived, these editions deprive the reader of the opportunity to remind himself that poetry is an experience rather than a quest for meaning and also of an introduction to the unique visual qualities of Reverdy's poetry.

This diploma thesis is written on one of the least investigated and the least known areas of the Russian literature - contemporary Russian poetry. The aim of this thesis is to propose certain perception of, on one hand, the artistic patterns and contents, and, on the other hand, of the historical, cultural, social and aesthetic significance of the contemporary poetry. The key principles of the current poetic scene include the shift of the literary paradigm, aesthetic pluralism, and variety of the artistic styles. This work consists of three parts. The first chapter describes the theory of the forming of the post- Soviet literature, as well as its state after the second half of the 1980's until the present day, in the context of social, cultural and literary factors. The features and certain phenomena of the current literary process are also discussed within the first chapter. The second chapter examines the main aesthetic trends of the contemporary Russian poetry. The last part of the thesis provides the look upon the problematic and thematic characteristics as well as the stylistic features of the contemporary poetry. The research is based on the analysis of the works of some of the most outstanding contemporary Russian poets, which were included in the representative sample of this thesis: A....

Seamus Heaney's prose poetics return repeatedly to the adequacy of poetry, its ameliorative, restorative response to the inimical reality of life in the public domain. Drawing on manuscript as well as print sources, this thesis charts the development of this central theme, demonstrating the extent to which it threads throughout the whole of Heaney's thought, from his earliest conceptual formation to his late cultural poetics. Heaney's preoccupation with this idea largely originates in his undergraduate studies where he encounters Leavis and Arnold's accounts of poetry's adequacy: its ameliorative cultural and spiritual function. He also inherits, from Romantic and modernist influences, two differing accounts of poetry's relationship to reality. That conflicted inheritance engenders a crisis within Heaney's own early theorisation of poetry's adequacy to the violence of public life. An important period of clarification ensues, out of which emerge the dualisms of his later thought, and his emphasis on poetry's capacity to encompass, and yet remain separate from, ‘history'. Accompanied by habitual appropriation of Christian doctrine and language, these conceptual structures increasingly assume a redemptive pattern. By the mid-1990s, Heaney's humanist commitment to a ‘totally adequate' poetry has assumed a thoroughly Arnoldian character. The logical strain of his conceptual constructions—particularly the emphasis on poetry's autonomy from history—becomes acutely apparent, revealing just how appropriate the ambivalent ideal ‘adequacy' is. The subsequent expansion of Heaney's poetics into a general affirmation of the arts illuminates the fiduciary character of his trust in poetry while exposing the limits of that trust: Heaney's belief in poetry's adequacy constitutes a humanist substitute for—indeed, an ‘afterimage' of—Christian belief. This, finally, is the deep significance of the idea of adequacy to Heaney's thought: it allows us to identify precisely the Arnoldian origin, the late humanist character, and the limits of his troubled trust in poetry.

Geoffrey Hill’s The Orchards of Syon (2002) occupies a contradictory position in twenty-first century poetry in being a major religious work in a post-religious age. Contemporary secular and atheistic insistence on the fundamentally crafted and flawed nature of religious faith has led Hill not to the abandoning of religious vision, but to a theologically disciplined approach to syntax, grammar and etymology. This dissertation examines Hill’s claim to a poetics of agnostic faith that mediate his alienation from a cynical and debased Anglophone contemporaneity. The oxymoronic nature of a faith co-existent with existential loss is the primary focus. The semantic distinction between paradox and poetic oxymoron is examined, and the agonistic and aporetic dimensions of the oxymoron are considered as affording theological significance. Poetic oxymoron as site of both foolish babbling and Pentecostal exuberance is made explicit, as is Hill’s relation to the oxymoronic nature of beatitudinous expression and the Kenotic Hymn. Hill’s reading of and relation to other theologically engaged poets is outlined. Thomas Hardy’s tragic-comic vision, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ restrained rapture in ‘The Windhover’, and T. S. Eliot’s expression of kenotic dissolution in ‘Marina’ are read as precursors to Hill’s revisionary God-language. William Empson’s significant difficulties with aspects of Hopkins’ and Eliot’s poetics is appraised as evidence of an oxymoronic and theological dimension within poetic ambiguity. Hill’s imperative to embody and enact theological vision and responsibility is tested in a reading of The Orchards of Syon. Paul Ricoeur’s perception of the religious significance of atheism is provocation for my own creative practice, as is the performative theology implicit in both Graham Shaw’s hermeneutic approach, and Hill’s visionary philology. Creative process draws on Simone Weil’s notion of decreation, the kenotic paradigm as exemplified in the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the continuing secular vitality of the apostrophic lyric mode.