“Whispers Out of Time”: Memorializing (Self-) Portraits in the Work of John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin

<p>This thesis documents four distinct post-WWII North American writers and artists—the poet John Berryman, the poet John Ashbery, the classicist and writer Anne Carson, and the photographer Nan Goldin—who expanded traditional definitions and practices of portraiture. Their works—<em>The Dream Songs</em>, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” <em>Nox, </em>and <em>The Ballad of Sexual Dependency </em>(and “The Cookie Portfolio”)—developed new ways of representing human subjectivity and the self that integrated the influences of Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, but were not defined by these movements. In an era when notions of autonomous art and human identity became fractured, they picked up the pieces and rearranged them to make portraits (within-self-portraits) that put personhood and mortality at the center of their art.</p> <p>In addition to close readings and comparisons of the poems, texts, and photographs, this thesis will situate the above and related works in their literary- and art-historical contexts. It will also reference relevant theoretical frameworks applied to these works and genres by critics and scholars.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2019

Author dc:creator

• King, Andrew D.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• George Fragopoulos

• American Literature
• American Studies
• Modern Literature
• Photography
• Contemporary American Poetry
• Elegy
• Postmodernism

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3185

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-4249