Shafer, Joseph R. (2017) Resistances in bodily form: post-1945 American Poetry and D.H. Lawrence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This project alters the field of American Studies and Modern American Poetry. For after Cold War critics of America's Myth and Symbol School had employed D.H. Lawrence for an American exceptionalism, and after Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1970) had disapproved of Lawrence, the British author has been marginalised by scholars of American Studies and American Poetry. As a result, Lawrence's foundational role within America's countercultural poetry has been overlooked. Robert Duncan, who led the Berkeley & San Francisco Renaissance, has repeatedly testified that Lawrence remains the 'hidden integer' within the poetics of Donald Allen's groundbreaking anthology, The New American Poetry: 1945-1960. This research project asks: how does the transatlantic reception of Lawrence change the tradition of post-1945 American poetry? Within the so-called 'New American Poetry,' queer, black, feminist, and non-academic voices emerged, yet their poetry defined itself by resisting the structures of 'closed-verse' as well. The break into 'open form' had renounced much of the American poetry tradition, especially the intellectualism of high-modernists. In this generational gap, Lawrence's banned writing on the sexual, sensual and political body becomes privileged by countercultural poets, and integrated into open-forms of poetry. Therefore this project also asks: how does the physical body, as found in Lawrence, surface within the disparate literary forms of leading poets and their coteries? Each chapter introduces an undocumented reception of Lawrence within a social network of post-WWII poets and follows a poet's reading of Lawrence's bodily form throughout their formative years. Featured poets include Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Sylvia Plath. The poets are chosen for their reliance upon Lawrence, but each poet also represents a wider social scene. As a new transatlantic and American literary history is charted, new readings emerge in new American poets and in Lawrence alike. In reinterpreting well-known and unknown poems though this lens, a new hermeneutic is explored wherein a bodily form surfaces within the spatial formations working upon the page.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PS American literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	American poetry -- 20th century, Human body in literature, American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism, Authors, English -- 20th century, Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert),1885-1930 -- Criticism and interpretation, Modernism (Literature) -- United States, American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Official Date:	January 2017
Dates:	Date Event January 2017 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Katz, Daniel
Extent:	288 leaves
Language:	eng

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