Engaging aesthetics: American poetry and politics, 1925-1950

Amidst attempts to repoliticize American literary study, some recent scholars have set aside or pushed to the background questions of aesthetic quality in political poetry. But many poets active during the 1930's and 1940's saw political engagement and poetic accomplishment as mutually reinforcing. These poets recognized that effective political poetry must fashion imagined communities, collections of people with shared values, goals, and commitments. I read this poetry in the networks of publication, circulation and reception that surround it, taking these practices into account as crucial components of the textual acts the poems comprise. The poets I discuss--Edwin Rolfe, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Muriel Rukeyser--represent a range of attitudes toward poetry, politics, and the relationship between the two. My approach addresses a set of broad theoretical issues: the relationship between the categories of the aesthetic and the political, the consequent construction of traditions or canons, and, not least, the cultural politics entailed by these.

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

• Thurston, Michael Tracy

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nelson, Cary

• History, United States
• Literature, American
• Political Science, General

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1995 Thurston, Michael Tracy

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9624515
(UMI)AAI9624515

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19264