After Language Writing:  In Defense of a Provisional Poetics

Roberson, Michael

After Language Writing: In Defense of a Provisional Poetics

atmire.migration.oldid	1066
dc.contributor.advisor	Bök, Christian
dc.contributor.author	Roberson, Michael
dc.date.accessioned	2013-06-26T20:45:36Z
dc.date.available	2013-11-12T08:00:13Z
dc.date.issued	2013-06-26
dc.date.submitted	2013	en
dc.description.abstract	This dissertation contextualizes North American “Post-Language” writing within a discourse about poetry and ethics—a discourse that I associate with explorations of ethical responsibility in poetic defenses. I posit a theory of “provisionality” in order to account for both the poetics and the ethics of the poetic defense. Provisionality consists of three aspects—the necessary, the conditional, and the anticipatory—aspects that characterize how apologists organize their defenses, and how poetry takes responsibility for the world, the audience, the poet, and the text. I contend that Post-Language writers represent the most recent defenders of poetry’s ethicality, grounding the abstract politics of Language writing in actual political stakes, like gender, race, and class. This dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter one elaborates my theory of “provisionality,” providing a survey of poetic defenses. Inspired by M.H. Abrams’s four orientations of literary theory, I chart the history of defenses in four major modes and four transitional modes of poetic responsibility. Chapter two considers four Language writers, Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews, Lyn Hejinian, and Charles Bernstein, all of whom engage in four provisional modes of poetic responsibility—modes that revise the four traditional modes of poetic responsibility. Explicating four poems by these writers, I demonstrate how these writers enact an ethical responsibility. Chapter three explores the concept of the “Post-Language,” examining the work of four American Post-Language poets, Mark Nowak, Rodrigo Toscano, Juliana Spahr, and Harryette Mullen. Aligning each writer with one of the provisional modes, I explicate poems by these writers in order to show how Post-Language writing grounds these modes in actual political stakes. Chapter four proposes a Canadian Post-Language phenomenon, and considers the work of four poets, Jeff Derksen, Rachel Zolf, Lisa Robertson, and Stephen Cain. Associating each writer with one of the provisional modes, I explicate poems by these writers in order to represent Post-Language writing as a North American sensibility. In my conclusion, I offer a Manifesto for an ongoing Poetics of Provisionality.	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Roberson, M. (2013). After Language Writing: In Defense of a Provisional Poetics (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24737	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/24737
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11023/768
dc.language.iso	eng
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en
dc.publisher.place	Calgary	en
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Literature--Modern
dc.subject	Literature--Modern
dc.subject	Literature--American
dc.subject	Literature--Canadian (English)
dc.subject	Literature--Modern
dc.subject.classification	Post-Language Poetry	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Language Writing	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Poetry and ethics	en_US
dc.subject.classification	experimental poetry	en_US
dc.title	After Language Writing: In Defense of a Provisional Poetics
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	English
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.item.requestcopy	true