Carnivalized narratives in the postmodern long poem

As a decidedly American tradition, the long poem has become the premier literary endeavor for poets in the twentieth-century. Writers such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams have pursued the long poem, but under the auspices of the "modern epic." Three postmodern long poems---Kenneth Koch's Seasons on Earth, Edward Dom's Gunslinger, and James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover---illustrate a dramatic rupture with the texts of modernism by introducing comic situations and multi-voiced narration---situations described by Mikhail Bakhtin as "dialogism" and "carnival," receptively---into the canon of American long poems. These innovations allow the postmodern long poem to evolve past the thematic and aesthetic strictures imposed by the texts of modernism.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2000

Author dc:creator

• Moffett, Joe Wade

Contributors dc:contributor

• Brian McHale
• Patrica DeMarco
• James Harms

• American literature
• Modern literature

Identifier

https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/743

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchrepository.wvu.edu:etd-1746