Moments of brocade: The aesthetics of excess in American women's poetry

"The dissertation identifies and explores a female literary tradition that I am calling the ""poetics of excess."" The purpose of the study is to offer a new way to read certain women poets whom readers have regarded as flawed by various stylistic and thematic excesses. Instead of thinking of excess as a weakness, I take it to be a deliberate aesthetic strategy for overcoming the limitations that the dominant literary culture imposes on a woman writer. I build my theoretical argument not only on reading of the poems but also on analyses of the letters, journals, and other prose works of the main poets in this tradition--Dickinson, Stein, and Plath. In each chapter I pursue extended reading of their key poems about composition to demonstrate both the workings of excess in the poetry and the poem's own recapitulation of the need for such an aesthetic."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Ford, Karen Jackson

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nelson, Cary

• Women's Studies
• Literature, American

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1989 Ford, Karen Jackson

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9010856
(UMI)AAI9010856

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19209