Abstract
This study examines Anne Carson’s use and abuse of the lyric form, elucidating how Carson reinvigorates the lyric poem with the power of the sublime, and theorizing the relationship between poetry and knowledge. Through three critical and historical inflections, “Symbolon: The Poetry of Anne Carson” contextualizes Carson’s synthetic approach to poetry alongside the work of her significant influences and her significant peers. In following two diverging themes in Carson’s work, the erotic and the thanatological, this dissertation posits a new way to understand Carson’s contribution to poetry in Canada. By illuminating the ways in which Carson proffers a significant challenge to both contemporary critical practices and contemporary poetic practices, “Symbolon: The Poetry of Anne Carson” traces the development of an alternative lyrical tradition – a tradition that manifests the sublime as a “counter-song” to the neo-Romanticism that pervades lyricism in Canada.
This dissertation consists of five chapters. The Introduction, “Troubling Propositions,” links Carson’s reception by readers, critics, and academics to her unique poetics, elaborating on the controversies surrounding both her publications and her prestigious, international awards. Chapter one, “Synagôgê and Diairesis: Anne Carson’s Classical Precedents,” establishes the way the Classics influence Carson’s poetry and scholarship, including her theories of both desire and loss. Chapter two, “The Matter of History: Anne Carson’s Modern Inflections,” provides context for Carson’s poetic experimentalism, locating her concerns about historical representation among those of Ezra Pound, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Phyllis Webb, and P. K. Page. Chapter three, “Postmodern Relatives: Anne Carson’s Elusive Doubles,” theorizes her subversive use of the lyric in relation to Postmodernist epistemology, including an examination the work of her peers Sina Queyras and Lisa Robertson. In conclusion, “Symbolon: The Poetry of Anne Carson” speculates that Carson’s approach to the lyric both affirms the consanguinity of philosophy and poetics, and constitutes an alternative to the dominant lyrical tradition in Canada.
