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Download fileWalt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, and the poetry of bodily habitat
thesis
posted on 2022-03-28, 13:12 authored by Sarah FantiniThe environmental humanities have recently experienced a 'material turn', and are increasingly considering the active role of matter in all discursive practices. Placing an emphasis on the relationship between human corporeality and textuality, this thesis applies a material ecocritical methodology to a comparative study of Walt Whitman's 1855 edition of Leaves of grass and Gertrude Steiner's Tender buttons (1914). Attentive to the ecocritical imperative to emphasise the physical world in literary analysis, the thesis examines the ways in which Whitman and Stein integrate the human body, the text, and the material environment to assert a poetics of bodily habitat which is increasingly relevant to the literary and environmental concerns of the present day. This thesis argues that Whitman and Stein's poetic innovations propose a human self constituted through its relationship with organic and inorganic matter.
History
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Chapter 1. Material language, material world -- Chapter 2. The limitless interior -- Chapter 3. The creative text -- Conclusion.Notes
Theoretical thesis. Bibliography: pages 63-66Awarding Institution
Macquarie UniversityDegree Type
Thesis MResDegree
MRes, Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of EnglishDepartment, Centre or School
Department of EnglishYear of Award
2015Principal Supervisor
Toby DavidsonRights
Copyright Sarah Fantini 2015. Copyright disclaimer: http://www.copyright.mq.edu.auLanguage
EnglishExtent
1 online resource (66 pages)Former Identifiers
mq:44711 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1071531Usage metrics
Categories
Keywords
Leaves of grassWhitman, Walt, -- 1819-1892 -- Criticism and interpretationAmerican poetryhuman bodyWalt WhitmanGertrude SteinStein, GertrudeWhitman, Walt, -- 1819-1892. -- Leaves of grassWhitman, WaltStein, Gertrude, -- 1874-1946 -- Criticism and interpretationTender buttonsnew materialismEcocriticism in literatureAmerican poetry -- History and criticismecocriticismenvironmentStein, Gertrude, -- 1874-1946. -- Tender buttons