The power of Confessional poetry derives in large part from its reputation for telling the truth. Indeed, the very term “confessional” indicates the genre’s status as a discourse of truth. Recent scholarship on Confessional poetry has focused on revealing how the genre is not as authentic or truthful as readers have assumed, and has countered assumptions from earlier critics that Confessional poems are uncritically autobiographical. The relationship between Confessional poetry and truth does not entail the facts of the author’s lives as previously assumed, yet, rather than disassociate Confessionalism from truth altogether, I seek to redefine the relationship. Instead of regarding Confessional poetry as a collection of individual confessions, we should understand the genre more broadly in terms of what U.S. culture considers to be confessional. The truth at the heart of Confessional poetry lies in its revelation of culturally significant information: the sites of our deepest emotions, the topics we vehemently disagree on, the places we feel most vulnerable, and the matters we really care about. Confessions often have cultural significance as they tap into the systems of power that intimately shape people’s lives. The continuing genre of Confessional poetry in the United States reveals the truths of the body, and how the personal is political over generations. I carry out this argument through the poems of several generations of Confessional poets, and through the lenses of class, gender, and race, in order to find what we consider worth confessing, what we do not, and how the content of our confessions evolves or remains over time. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / March 23, 2018. / confession, Confessional poetry, gender, race, truth / Includes bibliographical references. / Joann Gardner, Professor Directing Dissertation; Reinier Leushuis, University Representative; Linda Saladin-Adams, Committee Member; Robert Stilling, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_653488 |
| Contributors | Perfetti-Oates, Natalie (author), Gardner, Joann, 1950- (professor directing dissertation), Leushuis, Reinier, 1969- (university representative), Saladin, Linda, 1949- (committee member), Stilling, Robert, 1977- (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of English (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (144 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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