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Sexual Projection in William Carlos Williams's Poetry

The thesis commences an examination of Williams's divided nature and conflicted personality. The connection between the "hidden core" of Williams's life claimed in the Autobiography and his repressed sexual desire as divulged in his poetry is primarily concerned.
From Chapter Two to Chapter Four, I attempt to demonstrate that Williams, in the poetic world, finds an outlet to release the suppression of his desire. Especially in his earlier poetry imbued with the poet's highly autobiographical elements, written from 1909 to1939, Williams projects his repressed sexual desire unto the images of nature, woman and little girl. In an essay "Vortex," Williams argues that he is entitled to take any object or even the entire world as a vehicle for self-expression. I employ this argument for approaching Williams's nature poems. The image of female can be deemed as one of the cardinal subjects in Williams's poetry. In exploring Williams's poems about women and little girls, I have two main concerns: first, I examine how he constructs the sexy nature of varied women to dissimulate his erotic nature and projection; second, I inspect how he deconstructs the innocence of little girls so as to exonerate his adult sexual deviation.
The thesis concludes with a brief comparison between Williams and some contemporary poets for affirming the uniqueness of his sensual and even erotic nature as a Modernist poet. In a word, Williams is inspired to write poetry by the strong impulse of his repressed sexual desire.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0703100-003948
Date03 July 2000
CreatorsTai, Feng-Chen
ContributorsChing-Tai Liu, Cheng-Chiun Chung, Ling Chung
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0703100-003948
Rightsrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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