THE ARTICULATION OF DIFFERENCE IN JOHN ASHBERY'S POETRY
Abstract
This dissertation examines the poetry of John Ashbery to learn of its place within modern poetry and within the tradition. The overriding contention centers on his critique of traditional norms of discourse, representation, mimesis, influence, and reference; these traditional norms constitute the problematic explored in Ashbery's poetry. Concentrating on the major long poems assists in discovering the linguistic and rhetorical strategies at work in the poetry, thus situating the poetry within the current debate among contemporary schools of literary criticism--especially among the various permutations of New Criticism, Deconstruction, and Reader-Response Aesthetics. Furthermore, the richness of Ashbery's work requires a critique based on a variety of approaches: from the aesthetic conventions of mimesis and representation; from the philosophical premises of semantics and semiotics; from the tradition spanning medieval to contemporary poetry; and from the interconnections between poetry and painting. While a number of critics have observed that Ashbery's poetry is difficult and inaccessible, no one has systematically defined the nature of that difficulty. Using George Steiner's fourfold distinction of types of difficulty, the first chapter discusses difficulty as it pertains to Ashbery's poetry. This chapter examines the recent "Litany" as an extended example. The second chapter analyzes Ashbery's use of the "other tradition" as a poetic stance. The "other tradition" finds its foil, of course, in the "tradition" invoked so often as a value and category-term by Eliot, Frye, and Bloom. The notion of intertextuality evident in several key texts is juxtaposed with the concept of tradition. The third chapter explores the critique of writing projected in "Clepsydra" and "The Skaters." The fourth chapter discusses the ut pictura poesis convention as it applies to "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror." The notion of play as a controlling motive for this critique of traditional conventions is presented in the conclusion.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
American literature
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