Poetry by Elizabeth Bishop is filled with issues of domesticity and belonging, intimacy and loss, as well as transparent language and local scenes, all of which are types or expressions of ordinariness. Building from the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell proposes that ordinariness ? both ordinary language and everyday life ? presents the greatest challenge to philosophical skepticism. To Cavell, skepticism threatens us with doubt and the inhumanity of disconnection from life and the world. In In Quest of the Ordinary, Cavell describes challenging the skeptical threat with the resettling of the everyday, a domestication of skepticism that makes life a livable place. Cavell?s sense of a need for opposition to skepticism that makes life livable is confirmed by readers of Bishop who find her handling questions, doubts, and the frustration of loss in a way that seems manageable and a way that also emphasizes the significance of ordinariness. Cavell?s work is an opportunity to characterize the recurring patterns and themes as well as the contrasts and the differences in Bishop?s poems as a search for ordinariness. I claim that ordinariness in Bishop?s poetry exists, as in Cavell, in dialogue with skepticism, so that Bishop?s quest for the ordinary is a struggle to protect against as well as preserve skepticism. The quest, as both Cavell and Bishop depict it, is endless because ordinariness is elusive, but a struggle with and for ordinariness is appealing, both in Bishop?s poetry and Cavell?s philosophy, because it alternately allows hope and skepticism. Her poems are widely appreciated because, as Randall Jarrell said, they suggest ?it is barely but perfectly possible? to live in the world.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-03232007-141516 |
| Date | 27 April 2007 |
| Creators | Helm, Daniel Joseph |
| Contributors | Nick Halpern, Thomas Lisk, Anne Baker |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03232007-141516/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds