Academic literature on the topic 'American poetry American poetry Food in literature'

The article addresses the issue of the intimate but troublesome liaison between philosophy and literature—referred to in scholarship as “the ancient quarrel between poets and philosophers.” Its aim is double-fold. First, it traces the interweaving paths of philosophical and literary discourse on the example of Wallace Stevens’s oeuvre. It demonstrates that this great American modernist advocates a clear distinction between poetry and philosophy on the one hand, but draws on and dramatizes philosophical ideas in his poems on the other. The vexing character of his poetic works exemplifies the convoluted and inescapable connections between philosophy and poetry. Second, it discusses various approaches to metaphor, highlighting Stevens’s inimitable take on it. The diverse ways of tackling metaphorical language cognize metaphor’s re-descriptive and reconfiguring character. They embrace e.g., Stevens’s concept of metaphor as metamorphosis, or as “resemblance rather than imitation.” The to date interpretations of Stevens’s poetry in the light of a whole host of philosophies yield important insights into the meaningful interconnections between poetry and philosophy. However, rather than offering another interpretation of his poems from a given philosophical angle, the versatile voices presented here interrogate what poetry consists in.

Background. Choral work of American composers of the second half of the XX century is characterized by new qualities that have appeared because of not only musical but also non-musical factors generated by the system of cultural, historical and social conditions. Despite of a serious amount of scientific literature on the history of American music, the choral layer of American music remains partially unexplored, especially, in Ukrainian musical science, that bespeaks the science and practical novelty of the research results. The purpose of this study is to discover and to analyze the peculiarities of the historical formation and identity of American choral art of the second half of the twentieth century using the the works of famous American artists as examples. The research methodology is based on theoretical, historical and analytical methods, generalization and specification. Results. The general picture of the development of American composers’ practice in the genre of choral music is characterized by genre and style diversity. In our research we present portraits of iconic figures of American choral music in the period under consideration. So, the choral works of William Dawson (1899–1990), one of the most famous African-American composers, are characterized by the richness of the choral texture, intense sonority and demonstration of his great understanding of the vocal potential of the choir. Dawson was remembered, especially, for the numerous arrangements of spirituals, which do not lose their popularity. Aaron Copland (1899–1990), which was called “the Dean of American Composers”, was one of the founder of American music “classical” style, whose name associated with the America image in music. Despite the fact that the composer tends to atonalism, impressionism, jazz, constantly uses in his choral opuses sharp dissonant sounds and timbre contrasts, his choral works associated with folk traditions, written in a style that the composer himself called “vernacular”, which is characterized by a clearer and more melodic language. Among Copland’s famous choral works are “At The River”, “Four Motets”, “In the Beginning”, “Lark”, “The Promise of Living”; “Stomp Your Foot” (from “The Tender Land”), “Simple Gifts”, “Zion’s Walls” and others. Dominick Argento’s (1927–2019) style is close to the style of an Italian composer G. C. Menotti. Argento’s musical style, first of all, distinguishes the dominance of melody, so he is a leading composer in the genre of lyrical opera. Argento’s choral works are distinguished by a variety of performers’ stuff: from a cappella choral pieces – “A Nation of Cowslips”, “Easter Day” for mixed choir – to large-scale works accompanied by various instruments: “Apollo in Cambridge”, “Odi et Amo”, “Jonah and the Whale”, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”, “Te Deum”, “Tria Carmina Paschalia”, “Walden Pond”. For the choir and percussion, Argento created “Odi et Amo” (“I Hate and I Love”), 1981, based on the texts of the ancient Roman poet Catullus, which testifies to the sophistication of the composer’s literary taste and his skill in reproducing complex psychological states. The most famous from Argento’s spiritual compositions is “Te Deum” (1988), where the Latin text is combined with medieval English folk poetry, was recorded and nominated for a Grammy Award. Among the works of Samuel Barber’s (1910–1981) vocal and choral music were dominating. His cantata “Prayers of Kierkegaard”, based on the lyrics of four prayers by this Danish philosopher and theologian, for solo soprano, mixed choir and symphony orchestra is an example of an eclectic trend. Chapter I “Thou Who art unchangeable” traces the imitation of a traditional Gregorian male choral singing a cappella. Chapter II “Lord Jesus Christ, Who suffered all lifelong” for solo soprano accompanied by oboe solo is an example of minimalism. Chapter III “Father in Heaven, well we know that it is Thou” reflects the traditions of Russian choral writing. William Schumann (1910–1992) stands among the most honorable and prominent American composers. In 1943, he received the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for Cantata No 2 “A Free Song”, based on lyrics from the poems by Walt Whitman. In his choral works, Schumann emphasized the lyrics of American poetry. Norman Luboff (1917–1987), the founder and conductor of one of the leading American choirs in the 1950–1970s, is one of the great American musicians who dared to dedicate most of their lives to the popular media cultures of the time. Holiday albums of Christmas Songs with the Norman Luboff Choir have been bestselling for many years. In 1961, Norman Luboff Choir received the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Chorus. Luboff’s productive work on folk song arrangements, which helped to preserve these popular melodies from generation to generation, is considered to be his main heritage. The choral work by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) – a great musician – composer, pianist, brilliant conductor – is represented by such works as “Chichester Psalms”, “Hashkiveinu”, “Kaddish” Symphony No 3)”,”The Lark (French & Latin Choruses)”, “Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide)”, “Mass”. “Chichester Psalms”, where the choir sings lyrics in Hebrew, became Bernstein’s most famous choral work and one of the most successfully performed choral masterpieces in America. An equally popular composition by Bernstein is “Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers”, which was dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy, the stage drama written in the style of a musical about American youth in searching of the Lord. More than 200 singers, actors, dancers, musicians of two orchestras, three choirs are involved in the performance of “Mass”: a four-part mixed “street” choir, a four-part mixed academic choir and a two-part boys’ choir. The eclecticism of the music in the “Mass” shows the versatility of the composer’s work. The composer skillfully mixes Latin texts with English poetry, Broadway musical with rock, jazz and avant-garde music. Choral cycles by Conrad Susa (1935–2013), whose entire creative life was focused on vocal and dramatic music, are written along a story line or related thematically. Bright examples of his work are “Landscapes and Silly Songs” and “Hymns for the Amusement of Children”; the last cycle is an fascinating staging of Christopher Smart’s poetry (the18 century). The composer’s music is based on a synthesis of tonal basis, baroque counterpoint, polyphony and many modern techniques and idioms drawn from popular music. The cycle “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, created by a composer and a pianist William Bolcom (b. 1938) on the similar-titled poems by W. Blake, represents musical styles from romantic to modern, from country to rock. More than 200 vocalists take part in the performance of this work, in academic choruses (mixed, children’s choirs) and as soloists; as well as country, rock and folk singers, and the orchestral musicians. This composition successfully synthesizes an impressive range of musical styles: reggae, classical music, western, rock, opera and other styles. Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) was named “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts (2006). The musical language of Lauridsen’s compositions is very diverse: in his Latin sacred works, such as “Lux Aeterna” and “Motets”, he often refers to Gregorian chant, polyphonic techniques of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and mixes them with modern sound. Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” is a striking example of the organic synthesis of the old and the new traditions, or more precisely, the presentation of the old in a new way. At the same time, his other compositions, such as “Madrigali” and “Cuatro Canciones”, are chromatic or atonal, addressing us to the technique of the Renaissance and the style of postmodernism. Conclusions. Analysis of the choral work of American composers proves the idea of moving the meaningful centers of professional choral music, the gradual disappearance of the contrast, which had previously existed between consumer audiences, the convergence of positions of “third direction” music and professional choral music. In the context of globalization of society and media culture, genre and stylistic content, spiritual meanings of choral works gradually tend to acquire new features such as interaction of ancient and modern musical systems, traditional and new, modified folklore and pop. There is a tendency to use pop instruments or some stylistic components of jazz, such as rhythm and intonation formula, in choral compositions. Innovative processes, metamorphosis and transformations in modern American choral music reveal its integration specificity, which is defined by meta-language, which is formed basing on interaction and dialogue of different types of thinking and musical systems, expansion of the musical sound environment, enrichment of acoustic possibilities of choral music, globalization intentions. Thus, the actualization of new cultural dominants and the synthesis of various stylistic origins determine the specificity of American choral music.

Clark Davis, “Very, Garrison, Thoreau: Variations on the Antebellum Passive” (pp. 332–359) This essay contends that the poetry of Jones Very, often considered predominately “mystical,” was deeply engaged in political debates of the era. Not only did Very often write poems with an avowedly public purpose, but his seemingly otherworldly, spiritual sonnets sometimes participated in antebellum political debates. The sonnet “The Hand and Foot” (1839), for instance, describes a mode of Christian passivity and quietism that echoes the contemporaneous call for passive “non-resistance” to slavery found in William Lloyd Garrison’s 1838 “Declaration of Sentiments,” the foundational statement of the New England Non-Resistance Society. Very’s poem also describes a mode of Christian behavior that is radically disruptive of social conformity, a kind of embodied “prayer” that may have influenced Henry David Thoreau’s more famous manifesto of passive resistance, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849). Thoreau witnessed Very’s passive but disruptive behavior on more than one occasion in Concord, Massachusetts, well before his own unique dramatization of nonconformity in the mid 1840s. Comparing Very’s erasure of individual will to Thoreau’s more canny deployment of passivity can help us clarify antebellum modes of passive engagement as they evolved toward the eventual violence of John Brown’s raid and the American Civil War.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-266). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed April 3, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-76).

This dissertation explores the afterlife of the Western epic tradition in the poetry of the United States of America after World War Two and in the wake of high modernism. The ancient, Classical conception of epic, as formulated by Aristotle, involves a crucial, integral opposition between ethos, or character, and mythos, or the defining features, narratives, and histories of the world through which ethos moves. The classical epic and its direct line of succession, from Homer to Virgil to Dante to Milton and even to Joel Barlow, uses the opposition between ethos and mythos to create literary tension and drive. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, Ezra Pound upended this tradition dynamic by attempting to create a new form of epic in which mythos, not ethos, was the principal agonist, and in which large-scale aspects of the political, literary, and economic world struggled for survival on their own terms, thus divorcing epic from its traditional reliance on ethos. Chapter One explores this dubious revolution in terms of Pound’s larger project of breaking away from his nineteenth century forbears. The remaining chapters comprise three case studies of the divergent ways in which later twentieth century poets sought to salvage something of the traditional epic dynamic from the ruin wracked by Pound and his acolytes. Chapter Two explores John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs, an epic-like poem that models itself subtly on Dante’s Commedia while placing a profound and deliberate emphasis on ethos even at the expense of mythos. Chapter Three explores Robert Lowell’s career-long effort to expose the terrifyingly inexorable nature of mythos, constructing an inconceivably enormous presence against whom character and divinity alike struggle in vain. Finally, Chapter Four examines Adrienne Rich’s early and middle years as an attempt to outline and enact a politically and socially efficacious means by which ethos might finally overcome mythos and liberate itself not only from the recursive historical traps of Pound, modernism, fascism, and patriarchy, but also from the literary history and tradition that lured humanity into believing that those traps ever existed. Berryman’s intervention in the epic tradition is heavily literary and overtly personal; Lowell’s is cynical, apocalyptic, and descriptively political; and Rich’s is revolutionary and messianic. Together, these three poets represent a meaningful sampling of the afterlife of the epic tradition in late twentieth-century America.
English

In the current “secular age,” more and more people find beliefs and behaviors associated with traditional religion intellectually and ethically untenable. At the same time, many “postsecular” writers, both believers and nonbelievers, continue to write with religious or religiously-inflected forms, themes, and purposes. In the United States, postsecular poets “wrestle with angels” by engaging constructively and deconstructively with matters traditionally considered the domain of religion and spirituality. While the recent work of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, John McClure and others puts the concept of the postsecular at the cutting edge of various fields of study, including religion, sociology, and literature, this dissertation presents the first study of contemporary postsecular poetry. The central question is, how should we define and describe contemporary postsecular poetry in the United States and how should we understand its religious and literary significance? To answer this question, this dissertation presents a broad survey of postsecular contemporary American poetry, offers extended analyses of the work of two preeminent postsecular poets—Li-Young Lee and Scott Cairns—and probes the implications for readers of the poetic forms found in such texts.