Steve McCaffery is one of Canada's most prolific and innovative
poet-theorists. Although he has attracted attention from major
American critics, study in Canada has been limited to avant-garde
journals, and occasional book reviews in mainstream media. Despite
his important output of poetry, theory, performances, audio tapes,
videotapes, prints and broadsides, McCaffery has never been the
focus of a major study in this country, or elsewhere.
It is the goal of this dissertation to provide the first complete
overview of McCaffery's thirty-year career. Through close readings
of selected texts, this dissertation classifies McCaffery's output into
various chronological stages. These include an early concrete phase,
a mid-career Marxist phase, and a late postmodern phase. The
dissertation also classifies McCaffery's writings into various thematic
endeavours. In particular, McCaffery recurrently foregrounds the
materiality of language, defies utility, conflates reading and writing,
and emphasizes writing as translation.
Much discussion of McCaffery's writing has been
unsympathetic, dismissive , and misrepresentative, largely because
reviewers seldom understand McCaffery's writing on its own terms.
Consequently, this dissertation provides a detailed explanation of
McCaffery's poetics alongside his poetry. Frequently Mcaffery's
theory differs significantly from the poetry it purports to explain; at
times, his poetics contradicts his poetry. Consequently, this thesis examines the disparity between McCaffery’s stated aesthetic and his
poetry, in order to test the viability and limits of his project.
Having described McCaffery's own intentions, this dissertation
critiques McCaffery's writing from theoretical positions outside his
own project. Using various feminist methodologies, it examines the
complex way in which McCaffery genders language, noting three
different, inconsistent trends in his poetry. Moreover, this thesis
begins to articulate McCaffery's position within the Canadian canon.
Although McCaffery himself is hostile to the notion of nationalism, he
can be seen, ironically, as part of a long-standing Canadian tradition which interrogates its own identity. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/8109 |
| Date | 15 May 2017 |
| Creators | Lewis, Kent Richard Arthur |
| Contributors | Scobie, Stephen |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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