Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Formalism (Literature)'

This thesis explores mid-length verse narratives, written by Dana Gioia, Sydney Lea, and Robert McDowell and tries to understand how we might better approach these poems, which represent the central experiments of the New Formalist enterprise. These verse narratives have remained overlooked by scholars and rejected by early critics on purely ideological grounds. Written over the past twenty-five years, they challenge Modernist experimentation, which had become the new orthodoxy that primarily focused on and exhausted the lyric mode of expression. This study combines close readings of the verse narratives together with a vast corpus of critical essays by the practitioners of New Formalism. It identifies a gap in narratological studies that renders the poetic aspect of the narratives irrelevant. By applying the Russian formalist concepts of suzjet to include the lineation and compression of time in these poems as it relates to the fabula, this study reverses that trend. As these narratives converge on the theme of violence, a Christian tragedy of possibility emerges, leading to the chief conclusion of this thesis: These poems are the story. It becomes evident that the tragic mode in which these poets write is perfectly suited to the compressed nature of their poems. The theme of violence is a metaphor for the broad cultural problem of illiteracy and abandoned literary forms and traditions, including rhyme and meter, that have rendered tragedy dead to contemporary poetry and threatens the total extinction of writing the epic of our time.

This thesis develops a critical reading methodology entitled unprincipled formalism. This methodology is tested in close readings of three relatively contemporary Australian literary texts: David Malouf's short story "A Traveller's Tale" (1986) and novella Remembering Babylon (1994), and Peter Carey's short story "The Chance" (1978). Unprincipled formalism is developed in relation to three broad contexts: the fragmented state of the contemporary discipline of literary studies; the complex of international economic and social phenomena which goes under the general rubric of globalisation; and the specific Australian left-liberal literary critical tradition which I have termed, for convenience sake, the Meanjin literary formation. Unprincipled formalism does not draw a distinction between form and content. Unprincipled formalism is a critical methodology that is both avowedly socially concerned and strictly formalist. It is concerned with articulating and analysing the particular social and political interventions made by literary texts (as well as the resultant critical discussion of those texts) through a consideration of the formal techniques by which literary texts situate themselves as acts of communication. Principal among these techniques is the mise en abyme. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of debates around the mise en abyme informed by the work of theorists such as Ross Chambers, Lucien Dallenbach, Frank Lentricchia, Moshe Ron, Jacques Derrida and others. Politically, unprincipled formalism attempts to steer a middling course between neo-liberal triumphalism on the one hand and nostalgic left romanticism on the other. This involves on the one hand a critique of neo-liberalism drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Stephen Holmes, John Frow and others, and on the other a critique of a nostalgic romantic tendency in "progressive" critical technologies such as postmodern and postcolonial literary studies.

This thesis develops a critical reading methodology entitled unprincipled formalism. This methodology is tested in close readings of three relatively contemporary Australian literary texts: David Malouf's short story "A Traveller's Tale" (1986) and novella Remembering Babylon (1994), and Peter Carey's short story "The Chance" (1978). Unprincipled formalism is developed in relation to three broad contexts: the fragmented state of the contemporary discipline of literary studies; the complex of international economic and social phenomena which goes under the general rubric of globalisation; and the specific Australian left-liberal literary critical tradition which I have termed, for convenience sake, the Meanjin literary formation. Unprincipled formalism does not draw a distinction between form and content. Unprincipled formalism is a critical methodology that is both avowedly socially concerned and strictly formalist. It is concerned with articulating and analysing the particular social and political interventions made by literary texts (as well as the resultant critical discussion of those texts) through a consideration of the formal techniques by which literary texts situate themselves as acts of communication. Principal among these techniques is the mise en abyme. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of debates around the mise en abyme informed by the work of theorists such as Ross Chambers, Lucien Dallenbach, Frank Lentricchia, Moshe Ron, Jacques Derrida and others. Politically, unprincipled formalism attempts to steer a middling course between neo-liberal triumphalism on the one hand and nostalgic left romanticism on the other. This involves on the one hand a critique of neo-liberalism drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Stephen Holmes, John Frow and others, and on the other a critique of a nostalgic romantic tendency in "progressive" critical technologies such as postmodern and postcolonial literary studies.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Full Text

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 2006.
Title from title page screen, viewed on April 30, 2007. Dissertation Committee: Thomas Crumpler (chair), Dent Rhodes, Ellen Spycher. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-195) and abstract. Also available in print.

The present work deals with the literary-theoretical work of the Petrograd Formalists - those who participated in the OPOiaZ in the 1910s and early 1920s - with a focus on that oflurii Tynianov. It attempts to unpack the representation of their literary-theoretical work as 'science' [nauka] by exploring how that category was constructed in dialogue with their evolving conception of literature. It is argued in the first chapter that, for the duration of their project, they conceptualized the 'language of nauka' - and their own prose by association - in accordance with the laws of their theory of language. It is argued in the second chapter that, as the Formalists developed a theory of literary history as an endless succession of 'revolutions' in the period 1919- 24, they tried to make their theorization of that process take a correspondingly revolutionary form, one in which the sciences of nature and those of history would become one. It is argued in the third chapter that, as the Formalists came to theorize the connection between literature and life in the period 1924-30, they practised a new 'type' of nauka in the form of the authorial collection of articles, one in which their own work was historicized in a 'literary' manner. It is concluded that, for the OPOiaZ, nauka came into being as a function of its object: as the Formalists transformed their conception of literature, their realization of nauka was correspondingly transformed. The conclusion then problematizes the categorization of Formalism as a purely 'scientific', extra-'literary' movement, since emphasis is placed on their authorship of that categorization, and raises broader questions about the origin of modem 'literary theory'.

Uppsatsen undersöker Karl Ove Knausgårds Om høsten med utgångspunkt i Viktor Sjklovskijs främmandegöringsbegrepp och Toril Mois tankar om språk och uppmärksamhet. Huvudsyftet är tvådelat: dels att kombinera Sjklovskijs och Mois begreppsliga kluster som delvis är oppositionella på grund av deras vitt skilda relationer till formalismen. Och dels att använda denna kombination för att analysera Om høsten. Fokus ligger på hur vardagliga objekt och fenomen gestaltas, men också på den metadiskussion som förs genom texten kring uppmärksamhet och automatisering.

Suite à l’essoufflement du vers libre, et plus généralement à l’idée d’une crise de la poésie, un ensemble de poètes s’est attaché, dès les années 1960, à une redéfinition du genre, dans le sens d’un renouvellement du poème à partir de ses traditions. Paul Louis Rossi fut de ces écrivains, et un large pan de son oeuvre littéraire témoigne de son investissement dans cette recherche. Pratique de formes fixes, dimension épique de certains livres engagés dans une réécriture de l’histoire, il est évident que l’entreprise du poète s’inscrit dans une démarche que l’on pourrait qualifier de modernité archaïque.S’agissant d’inscrire le poète dans ce contexte, cette étude voudrait aussi mettre au jour une dimension plus personnelle de ce rapport au passé et à la mémoire, l’auteur développant une pensée du temps qui se situe visiblement à la croisée du biographique, de l’esthétique et de la métaphysique, et qui semble à l’origine même de son projet littéraire. Dans une analyse à la fois synchronique et diachronique, il s’agira de mettre en perspective cette pensée du temps et son expression rhétorique et formelle
Following the free verse's decrease, and the idea of a crisis in poetry in its globality, some poets worked, from the early 60's, on a new definition of the genre, in the way of a renewal from its tradition.Paul Louis Rossi was one of these writers, and a large part of his work is representative of his personnal investment in this research. Practice of formes fixes, epic dimension of some books engaged in rewriting history, obviously the poet's approach is a process that could be termed archaic modernity.. With regard to place the poet in this context, this study will expose the personnal dimension of hisrelation to past and memory, in which the author developps a thought of time that is patently at the crossroadsof autobiography, aesthetics and metaphysics, and seems to be the origin of Paul Louis Rossi's literary project. In an analysis both synchronic and diachronic, this time thought and its formal and rhetorical expression will be put into perspective

My dissertation focuses on the notion of “gesture” as a somatic manifestation of psychological experience. This view of movement was elaborated by late 19th-century psychologists, who gave up the metaphysical notion of the soul in favor of neuro-physiological approaches to behavior. My study shows how the new scientific discourse penetrated into a broader cultural sphere, generating wide interest in the question how the body participates in and reflects affective and cognitive processes. I examine the modes of recording, representing and interpreting body movement as “expressive.” Based on archival materials and periodicals, I chart out avenues by which the ideas and methods of physiological psychology reached artists and writers – a task, which involves evaluating institutional practices and cultural-political trends that promoted interdisciplinary engagements. Ultimately, my study demonstrates how scientific discourse transformed techniques of film acting, prompted film industries’ inquiries into spectators’ physical reactions, and spurred literary scholars’ investigations of poets’ intonation and body movement. Yet, rather than positing the direct influence of science, I attend to a variety of ways in which writers and artists reinterpreted, defamiliarized and resisted the positivist outlook brought forward by physiological psychology. In Chapter 1, I show how Viktor Shklovskii drew on William James’s theory of the corporeal experience of emotion and Wilhelm Wundt’s ideas on the gestural origin of language to discuss Russian Futurist poetry as a “ballet for the organs of speech.” Chapter 2 analyzes Boris Eikhenbaum’s essays on poetic declamation by placing them in the context of the Petrograd Institute of the Living Word. In this organization, Russian Formalists worked alongside speech therapists and psychologists, using parlograph records of poetry performances. I compare their methods of registering poetic intonations to similar endeavors by American phoneticians Edward Scripture and R.H. Stetson. Chapter 3 traces the origins of Lev Kuleshov’s system of film actors’ training, arguing that his ideas emerged at the juncture of avant-garde theater, Pavlovian reflexology, and labor efficiency movement. Chapter 4 considers psycho-physiological approaches to film spectatorship, focusing on American and Soviet efforts to assess the emotional responses of filmgoers by photographing their facial reactions and registering changes in their vital signs.

Taking a cue from the occasional reticence of the often-exuberant American Romantic poetics, this project tracks what I call “rhetorics of silence” in verse: those moments where words are declared to be inadequate, impertinent, unavailable, unintelligible or otherwise unsuitable for a task that the poet has proposed. In this respect, the term “silence” functions here as a broad metaphor encompassing a number of meta-linguistic or meta-poetic gestures aimed at highlighting the shortcomings of knowledge and representation. Whereas earlier critics have noticed these silences in haphazard ways, this project looks toward a systematic account of why and when nineteenth-century poets rely on gestures to the space beyond language. This intervention is especially useful for reading the seminal American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Because Whitman seems celebratory and Dickinson doleful, it has often been difficult to offer productive readings of the two in tandem. Where Whitman does resemble Dickinson, it is often thought to be in his poems that abandon or despair of his project for a democratic poetics. By contrast, working through the lyric and political verse of the lesser-known poetry of John Rollin Ridge, this project reads visionary and despairing silences as alike rhetorical gestures aimed at highlighting the common humanity of the poet and the reader. “Silence” is therefore an outgrowth of American ideology, albeit one that frequently allows poets to expand and query that ideology in ways that are not possible in the many corresponding but often blither deployments of rhetorical silence in the culture at large.

Abstract : The field of literature taken as a sociological phenomenon has enlightened and deepened our knowledge and appreciation of several national literatures, and the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Georg Simmel in this field are now considered ground-breaking. In Québec, the Groupe de recherche sur l’édition littéraire au Québec (now operating under the name « Groupe de recherche sur l’étude du livre au Québec ») has been particularly active in studying the sociological conditions that make literature possible in this Canadian province. Parallel to this, the Équipe de recherche interuniversitaire en littérature anglo-québécoise (ÉRILAQ) has gathered researchers interested in the “contact zone,” to borrow an expression from Catherine Leclerc and Sherry Simon, that is Anglo-Quebec literature. This dissertation will combine these two interests in order to study in greater depth the discourse and works of the poets of the Jubilate Circle, a network of poets writing in English in Québec at the turn of the twenty-first century. It will not only seek to prove the existence of a literary circle, it will attempt to showcase how the circle itself has contributed to advancing its members’ literary careers. In keeping with Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of cultural, symbolic and social capital, this dissertation will present, from the outset, a prosopographical sketch of the four poets that make up the Jubilate Circle, and examine the conditions in which they met, bonded as a group (of friends and of colleagues) and came to found the Jubilate Circle. Following this, the instances in which capital of all kinds (symbolic, cultural and social) were exchanged by the four poets will be examined through a close reading of correspondence, dedications, book jacket blurbs and even of the poetry itself. In an attempt to identify the homogeneous in the cacophony of discourse, to paraphrase Marc Angenot, the Jubilate Poets’ discourse on Canadian poetry, enunciated in interviews, essays, book reviews and in the press will then be examined. This will provide a better understanding of the position they hold, or wish to hold, within the field of Canadian poetry and indeed within its canon, existing or future. Finally, an analysis of the poetry they have produced will serve to underscore those aspects of their discourse that are deemed particularly relevant and will highlight areas in which some contradictions may be observed. As a whole, this dissertation will shed some light on the production of poetry, of its criticism and of its publication not only as a literary phenomenon, but also as a profoundly social one. // Résumé : L’étude du champ littéraire en tant que phénomène social a su éclairer et approfondir notre appréciation de plusieurs littératures nationales, et les travaux de Pierre Bourdieu et de Georg Simmel à cet égard sont aujourd’hui considérés fondateurs. Au Québec, le Groupe de recherche sur l’édition littéraire au Québec (aujourd’hui connu sous le nom « Groupe de recherche sur l’étude du livre au Québec ») a jeté les assises dans l’étude des conditions sociologiques qui rendent le phénomène littéraire possible dans cette province canadienne. Parallèlement, l’Équipe de recherche interuniversitaire en littérature anglo-québécoise (ÉRILAQ) réunit des chercheurs qui s’intéressent à cette “zone de contacte”, pour reprendre l’expression de Catherine Leclerc et de Sherry Simon, qu’est la littérature anglo-québécoise. Cette thèse combinera effectivement ces deux champs de recherche afin d’étudier de manière plus approfondie le discours et les œuvres des poètes du “Jubilate Circle”, un réseau de poètes publiant en anglais au Québec au tournant du vingt-et-unième siècle. Elle cherchera non seulement à prouver l’existence d’un cercle littéraire, mais tentera également de démontrer par quels moyens ce même cercle a pu contribuer à l’avancement des carrières littéraires de ses membres. Suivant les théories sur le capital culturel, symbolique et social énoncées par Pierre Bourdieu, cette thèse brossera, dans un premier temps, le profil prosopographique de chacun des acteurs du Jubilate Circle et se penchera sur les conditions qui ont favorisé leur rencontre, le bourgeonnement d’une amitié et d’une collaboration littéraire à long terme et la création du cercle littéraire. En second lieu, les instances dans lesquelles des échanges de capital ont lieu seront scrutées grâce à une lecture détaillée de la correspondance, des dédicaces, des textes de quatrième de couverture et même de la poésie elle-même. Dans le but de faire ressortir l’homogène que recèle la cacophonie du discours, pour paraphraser Marc Angenot, le discours tenu par les poètes du Jubilate Circle au sujet de la poésie canadienne contemporaine, énoncé lors d’entretiens, dans des essais littéraires, des comptes rendus et dans les quotidiens de ce pays sera examiné. Une telle étude permettra de faire la lumière sur leur posture et sur la position qu’ils occupent, ou souhaitent occuper, dans le champ de la poésie canadienne, voire dans son canon littéraire, présent ou futur. Enfin, une analyse de la poésie produite par ces quatre poètes sera l’occasion de souligner et d’illustrer certains aspects particulièrement significatifs de leur discours et révélera quelques instances dans lesquelles certaines contradictions peuvent être observées. Dans son ensemble, cette thèse vise à jeter un nouvel éclairage sur la production d’une poésie, de sa critique et de ses instances de publication non seulement en tant que phénomène littéraire, mais bien en tant que phénomène profondément social.

Né en 1935 à Estérençuby (Pyrénées Atlantiques), Eñaut Etxamendi est écrivain, poète et chanteur en langue basque. Dans son œuvre narrative, il décrit la société agraire du Pays Basque Nord – concrètement, la province de la Basse-Navarre – et son processus de désagrégation sociale et culturelle à partir des années 60. Quelle place accorder dans la littérature basque moderne à cette œuvre, qui sublime l'idylle détruite ? Quelle est sa place et son originalité au vu des productions des auteurs basques contemporains? Quelle part de l’œuvre d’Etxamendi se situe sous l’influence de la pensée nationaliste et quel peut bien être son degré de participation à la construction de mythes identitaires? Nous utilisons les concepts du formalisme russe pour décrire la structure, le matériau littéraire et le dynamisme de l'œuvre etxamendienne. Puis, nous interrogeons ces résultats par l'apport du post-formalisme et des propositions bakhtiniennes et tâchons de situer l'œuvre littéraire d'Eñaut Etxamendi dans son rapport à l'idylle détruite et au Cкaз. Finalement, nous faisons intervenir l'ethnocritique de la littérature et le post-colonialisme, afin d'inscrire l'œuvre littéraire d'Eñaut Etxamendi dans « la mémoire longue d’une communauté discursive » et dans le contexte particulier des années 1960-1990 qui alliait la vitalité politique à la vitalité culturelle. L’objectif de ce questionnement est d’approfondir dans la connaissance de l’œuvre d’un auteur mais aussi d’une région littéraire du Pays Basque encore trop peu étudiées
Eñaut Etxamendi was born in Esterençuby (Pyrénées Atlantiques, France), in 1935. He is a writer, poet an singer in basque language. In his literary work, Eñaut Etxamendi describes the agrarian society who was disappearing by the 60's in the North Basque Country – concretely in the province of Basse-Navarre – and the process of social and cultural disbanding that occured then.Where can be placed Eñaut Etxamendi's literary writing – sprung up in geographical and linguistic periphery – and its sublimated « idyllic chronotope » in basque modern literature ? Which is his originality comparing to other contemporary basque writer's works ? What is Etxamendi's part of work under nationalist theories's influence and up to which point has his literature pertained to the discourse of identity ? Our search is an attempt to improve knowledge of a few known author and few known literary area of Basque Country

In the course of this thesis, decisive problematizations, in the Foucauldian sense, around Viktor Šklovskij’s early Russian Formalism shall be the object of re-problematizations. More precisely, a careful look will be taken at re-problematizations around theoretical aspects regarding Šklovskij’s paradigmatic reductionist model, primarily as it is introduced in his article Art as device (1917), described most notably by Aage Hansen-Löve and Wolf Schmid in Der Russische Formalismus (1978) and Slavische Erzähltheorie (2010), Elemente der Narratologie (2014) as well as Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Erzählen (2018) respectively. The thesis will distinguish four main problematizations divided into two parts, taking the Marxist-Leninist debate on Formalism stirred by People’s Commissar Trotsky and the Nietzschean Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy characteristic of Russian Modernism as its starting points, encompassing the problematizations as a whole. The initial part of the thesis will address re-problematizations around Šklovskij’s formalist polemics with and misinterpretation of Alexandr Potebnja’s Humboldtian theories, as they appear chiefly in the monograph Thought and Language (1862), in order to illustrate how Šklovskij’s frames a continuum with Potebnja descending from the teachings of Wilhelm von Humboldt. The re-problematizations shall be underpinned by Victor Erlich in Russian Formalism. History – Doctrine (1980), Jacqueline Fontaine in La « innere Form » : de Potebnja aux formalistes (2006) and Serge Tchougounnikov in The formal method in Germany and Russia: the beginnings of European psycholinguistics (2018). The second part of the thesis will foreground the (French) (post)structuralist discourse which, according to this thesis, shapes the formation of problematizations around Šklovskij’s immanent reductionism against the backdrop of Boris Tomaševskij’s interpretation of Formalism in Teorija literatury. Poetika (1925) and also the ideological exchange of the 1920s, assuming this backdrop as part of a definitive understanding and materialist critique of Šklovskij’s reductionist terminology, the homogeneity of its outcome, and what Wolf Schmid calls its anti-substantialism particularly in regards to the binary concept fabula and sjužet. The re-problematizations evolve around what is taken as a materialist solution to these problematizations, which annulls the Aristotelian significance of sjužet as energeia by replacing it with ergon. The discussion will take its point of departure in Göran Sonesson’s article Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity (2011) and search the basis for Sonesson’s argument in Roland Barthes’ article Ecrivains et écrivants (1960). By highlighting Šklovskij’s early Formalism as a mode of experiencing Art on its own terms, this thesis aims to revive its aesthetic principle and the question whether it can enlighten modern literary science.

By the 1980s, Quebec formalists, including Bellefeuille, had abandoned the formalist practice typical of the previous decade. Bellefeuille then chose to write differently, integrating the expression of both self and reality in his work. He didn't, however, exclude the formalist contribution altogether, wishing rather to find a mixed aesthetic, combining both formalist and intimist elements. The dissertation will consider this aesthetic as exemplified in the poetry collection entitled Elle était belle comme une idée, a work encompassing an awareness of one's self as well as the Other and the world, while exploring the need of making room for reality and the difficulty this entails. The study examines the poet's overall approach as well as his attempts at opening up to the Other and his quest for a different way of writing. It concludes that the resulting aesthetic represents a compromise between formalism and intimism, two seemingly opposite poles.
Dès les années 1980, les formalistes québécois, dont Bellefeuille, abandonnent la pratique centrée sur la forme caractéristique de la décennie précédente. Bellefeuille choisit alors d'écrire autrement en intégrant l'expression de soi et du réel dans son oeuvre. Toutefois, il n'exclut pas d'emblée les acquis formalistes et désire plutôt les intégrer dans une esthétique métissée, traversée à la fois d'éléments formalistes et intimistes. Ce mémoire se penche sur cette esthétique à partir du recueil de poèmes Elle était belle comme une idée, une oeuvre à la fois consciente de l'Autre, du Monde et de l'état intime du locuteur, et qui réfléchit sur l'urgence de s'ouvrir au réel, mais aussi sur la difficulté de cette ouverture. L'étude examine d'abord le parcours du poète, puis ses tentatives de s'ouvrir à l'Autre et de trouver une nouvelle écriture. Elle conclut que l'esthétique mixte constitue un compromis entre formalisme et intimisme, deux pôles apparemment opposés.

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Resumo: Esta tese investiga o traço movediço do discurso de Manuel Bandeira a partir do diálogo que interpõe entre tradição e modernidade, ficção e biografia. O ponto de partida é a análise de como se apresenta a fusão destes aspectos em sua linguagem de forma a constituir-se elemento diferencial de seu estilo enquanto poeta e tradutor. Discutimos as marcas da existência e da morte com as quais alimenta essas duas linhas mestras de sua escritura e conduz o conjunto da obra para o núcleo do sujeito reinventado no espaço entre tradição e renovação, invenção e experiência. Para tanto, utilizamos os estudos sobre poética dos Formalistas e escavamos a existência de um espaço movediço em sua linguagem no qual se interseccionam esses elementos enquanto fios condutores; o espaço da morte. A essa perspectiva de análise formalista agregam-se as idéias sobre a experiência opaca de Florencia Garramuño ajustadas ao que se realiza em Bandeira enquanto atualização deste conceito, de onde se interpõem a língua, o sujeito e o procedimento artístico, tanto em sua obra poética quanto na traduzida. Com o olhar sobre a obra traduzida, finalizamos as reflexões da tese que enxerga na expressividade do autor um espaço de indissociabilidade entre esses elementos
Abstract: This Study Investigates Manuel Bandeira's discourse and it's movable trait, focusing on the dialogue that can be seen between tradition and modernity, fiction and biography. The starting point is the analysis of how the fusion of these aspects is presented in his writing and also how this fusion turns out to be an element of differentiation in Bandeira's style as a poet and translator. Both the marks of existence as well as the signs of death in the author's production are also studied here. These elements represent Bandeira's two main lines of writing and are used by the poet as a way to conduct the whole set of his literary production to the core of a subject that is reinvented in the gap found between tradition and renewal, invention and experience. To achieve the purpose of this work we use studies on poetry developed by the formalists and we also search for the existence of movable boundary lines in which these elements intersect as conductors; the language of death. To this perspective of formalist analysis, we add the ideas about Florência Garramuño's opaque experiences, adjusted to whatever is produced in Bandeira's work regarding the updating of this concept, in which language, subject and artistic procedure stand, both in his poetic creation as in his translation. Looking at the translated literary production, we end the reflexions of the thesis that observes, in the author's expressiveness, a apace of inseparability among the mentioned elements
Doutor

The argument of the thesis is that the literary forms of Thomas Merton's prose writings embody theological claims he makes elsewhere at the level of content. Specifically, the five chapters of the thesis show that Merton not only writes about the themes of self-denial, simplification, observing the 'thereness' of the world, and (in two distinct ways) apprehending God in darkness and obscurity, but that he also enacts those themes in the way he writes prose. The thesis offers an original and significant contribution to three main fields of enquiry. Firstly, when analysing Merton's prose I employ methods espoused by New Formalist literary critics, but I apply their reading strategies to the theological dimensions of literary form. Secondly, my work builds upon claims made by theologians of form about the link between literary genres or forms and issues surrounding, for instance, the character of God, but it does so in a novel way, by employing New Formalist close reading strategies. Thirdly, the thesis offers a new method of enquiry for Thomas Merton Studies, by performing the first extended literary-critical account of his prose. In sum, the thesis opens up new theoretical territory for Formalism, new specific material for the theology of form, and a new methodology for Merton Studies. Besides the introductory and concluding chapters, all of the chapters of the thesis are structured in the same way. Each includes an expositional section in which I quote from Merton's thoughts on, for example, self-denial, and a literary-critical section, in which I read the forms of Merton's prose in terms of the content-claims already outlined. The goal of this methodology is, at every stage, to show that Merton enacts his own theologically-rooted content claims in the forms of his prose.

This thesis is a transatlantic examination of self-representational strategies in factory women's poetry from circa 1848-1882, highlighting in particular how the medium of the working-class periodical enabled these socially marginal poets to subjectively engage with and reconfigure dominant typologies of class and gender within nineteenth-century poetics. The first chapter explores how working-class women were depicted in middle-class social-reform literature and working-class men's poetry. It argues that factory women were circumscribed into roles of social villainy or victimage in popular bourgeois reform texts by authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Caroline Norton, and were cast as idealized domestic figures in working-class men's poetry in the mid-nineteenth century. The remaining three chapters examine the poetry of Manchester dye-worker Fanny Forrester, Scottish weaver Ellen Johnston, and Lowell mill-girl Lucy Larcom as case-studies of factory women's poetics in mid-nineteenth century writing. Chapter Two discusses the life and work of Fanny Forrester in Ben Brierley's Journal, and considers how Forrester's invocation of the pastoral genre opens new opportunities for urban, factory women to engage with ideologies of domestic femininity within a destabilized urban cityscape. Chapter Three considers the work of Ellen Johnston, “The Factory Girl” whose numerous poems in The People's Journal and the Penny Post cross genres, dialects, and themes. This chapter claims that Johnston's poetry divides class and gender identity depending on her intended audience—a division exemplified, respectively, by her nationalistic poetry and her sentimental correspondence poetry. Chapter Four explores the work of Lucy Larcom, whose contributions to The Lowell Offering and her novel-poem An Idyl of Work harness the language and philosophy of Evangelical Christianity to validate women's wage-labor as socially and religiously appropriate. Ultimately, this thesis contends that nineteenth-century factory women's poetry from Britain and America embodies the tensions surrounding the “factory girl” identity, and offers unique aesthetic and representational strategies of negotiating women's factory labor.

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
Esta tese investiga o traço movediço do discurso de Manuel Bandeira a partir do diálogo que interpõe entre tradição e modernidade, ficção e biografia. O ponto de partida é a análise de como se apresenta a fusão destes aspectos em sua linguagem de forma a constituir-se elemento diferencial de seu estilo enquanto poeta e tradutor. Discutimos as marcas da existência e da morte com as quais alimenta essas duas linhas mestras de sua escritura e conduz o conjunto da obra para o núcleo do sujeito reinventado no espaço entre tradição e renovação, invenção e experiência. Para tanto, utilizamos os estudos sobre poética dos Formalistas e escavamos a existência de um espaço movediço em sua linguagem no qual se interseccionam esses elementos enquanto fios condutores; o espaço da morte. A essa perspectiva de análise formalista agregam-se as idéias sobre a experiência opaca de Florencia Garramuño ajustadas ao que se realiza em Bandeira enquanto atualização deste conceito, de onde se interpõem a língua, o sujeito e o procedimento artístico, tanto em sua obra poética quanto na traduzida. Com o olhar sobre a obra traduzida, finalizamos as reflexões da tese que enxerga na expressividade do autor um espaço de indissociabilidade entre esses elementos
This Study Investigates Manuel Bandeira's discourse and it's movable trait, focusing on the dialogue that can be seen between tradition and modernity, fiction and biography. The starting point is the analysis of how the fusion of these aspects is presented in his writing and also how this fusion turns out to be an element of differentiation in Bandeira's style as a poet and translator. Both the marks of existence as well as the signs of death in the author's production are also studied here. These elements represent Bandeira's two main lines of writing and are used by the poet as a way to conduct the whole set of his literary production to the core of a subject that is reinvented in the gap found between tradition and renewal, invention and experience. To achieve the purpose of this work we use studies on poetry developed by the formalists and we also search for the existence of movable boundary lines in which these elements intersect as conductors; the language of death. To this perspective of formalist analysis, we add the ideas about Florência Garramuño's opaque experiences, adjusted to whatever is produced in Bandeira's work regarding the updating of this concept, in which language, subject and artistic procedure stand, both in his poetic creation as in his translation. Looking at the translated literary production, we end the reflexions of the thesis that observes, in the author's expressiveness, a apace of inseparability among the mentioned elements

Essentiellement circonscrites dans la diégèse, la modernité et la postmodernité du roman africain francophone constituent moins deux esthétiques opposées, qu’elles ne s'identifient à une « coopération textuelle ». Le travail de réécriture de la première, par la seconde, prolonge et renouvelle le projet littéraire du roman africain francophone. Dès lors, la modernité littéraire de ce dernier s'inscrit, au-delà d’un déterminisme, dans une dynamique et un dynamitage textuels. Le texte, considéré dans son « insularité », fonde une littérarité surdéterminée, sinon par une logique de violence, du moins par un principe de subversion, qui s’expliquent par un rapport « problématique du langage » et par une volonté « de créer son propre lieu de parole ». Ce qui conduit à une esthétique structurale promouvant un formalisme élaboré et dominant, dont l'impact moderne en terme de renouvellement et d'inventivité investit davantage le signifiant qu'il n'incarne le signifié. Aussi la postmodernité littéraire désigne-t-elle ce par quoi le roman africain francophone dévie la tentation du fétichisme formel. Ainsi décentre-t-il son enjeu esthétique vers un travail de reconstruction de récits, insistant davantage sur les thèmes, les chroniques et autres histoires de violence. L'hétérogénéité, l'hybridation, la dissémination et les « jeux de langage » (banalisation, ironie, ludisme et effet d'irréel) incarnent des pratiques narratives de cette écriture du tragique. Par conséquent, cette dernière, plutôt qu'une représentation de la crise ou une crise de la représentation, procède d'une « mise en crise », lieu esthétique qui ouvre les potentialités créatrices d'un art poétique postmoderne. Finalement, au-delà des écritures de violence, la modernité et la postmodernité littéraires résultent, fondamentalement, d'un renversement d'optique propre au déploiement (ou redéploiement) de la subjectivité dans le roman africain de langue française. Subjectivité littéraire dont le bien-fondé consiste à dessiner deux cartographies narratives, moderne et postmoderne, par lesquelles les littératures, maghrébine et négro-africaine, d'expression française, balisent une voie d'accès à la Weltliteratur
The modernity and postmodernity of the francophone African novel, mainly confined to the level of diegesis, do not so much form two opposing aesthetics as take part in “textual cooperation.” The task of rewriting the former by the latter extends and renews the literary project of the francophone African novel. As a result, its literary modernity goes beyond a certain determinism to become part of a textual dynamics and indeed, a dynamiting. Taken in terms of its “insularity,” the text establishes an overdetermined literariness through, if not a logic of violence, at least a principle of subversion, which can be explained by a “problematic relationship to language” and a desire “to create its own place from which to speak.” This leads to a structural aesthetic that fosters an elaborate, dominant formalism whose modern impact, in terms of renewal and inventiveness, is more fully contained in the signifier than it is embodied in the signified. This is how literary postmodernity denotes that through which the francophone African novel diverts the temptation of formal fetishism. It decentres its aesthetic concern towards the task of reconstructing narratives, placing more emphasis on the themes, accounts and other stories of violence. Among the characteristic narrative practices of this writing of the tragic are heterogeneity, hybridization, dissemination and “language play” (banalization, irony, playfulness and unreal effect). As a result, such writing proceeds not from a representation of the crisis or a crisis of representation, but from an “enactment of crisis,” an aesthetic site that opens up the creative potential of postmodern poetic art. Fundamentally, going beyond writings of violence, literary modernity and postmodernity are the result of a shift in perspective related to the deployment (or redeployment) of subjectivity in the francophone African novel. And the value of this literary subjectivity consists in setting out two narrative cartographies, modern and postmodern, through which francophone literatures—Maghribi and Negro-African—stake out a path of access to Weiliteratur

Une idée particulière de littérature est née au cours des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, période qui coïncide avec la naissance du genre romanesque moderne. L’idée de roman moderne issue de ces transformations à cette époque-là configure un champ virtuel de caractéristiques qui a marqué aussi bien la théorie littéraire du XXe siècle que la production de textes. Cette recherche pose la question de la vitalité de cette idée de roman moderne et, par voie de conséquence, de la notion de littérature qu’elle suppose. Nous proposons donc une étude de l’idée de roman au sein des poétiques de trois auteurs hispano-américains contemporains : Juan José Saer, Ricardo Piglia et Roberto Bolaño. Cette étude tient compte autant d’aspects théoriques que formels et se concentre sur les essais et les entretiens des auteurs, ainsi que sur trois romans : La grande, La ciudad ausente et 2666. Nous postulons ainsi une lecture comparée à partir de l’indétermination, du rapport à l’expérience et de la réflexivité, considérés comme traits principaux de l’idée de roman moderne, ainsi qu’une analyse des trois romans à partir de leurs formes narratives, réflexives et hybrides
A particular idea of literature was born during the 18th and 19th centuries, a period that corresponds with the rise of the modern novel genre. The idea of the modern novel, which came about during this time period, constitutes a virtual field of characteristics that has left its mark on both 20th century literary theory and on textual production. This research questions the vitality of this particular idea of the modern novel and, therefore, of the notion of literature it withholds. Our aim then, is to study the idea of the novel as it is expressed in the poetics of three contemporary Latin American writers: Juan José Saer, Ricardo Piglia and Roberto Bolaño. This study considers theoretical aspects as well as formal ones, focusing on essays and interviews of the three authors, as well as on three novels: La grande, La ciudad ausente and 2666.It presents a comparative reading of these poetics according to three main concepts: indetermination, relation to experience and reflexivity, which we think to be central to the idea of the modern novel. In addition, this study analyzes the three novels in terms of their narrative, reflexive and hybrid forms

The thesis focuses on the metrical forms in Alfonso Gatto’s poetry. The work analyses Gatto’s entire production from the first book, Isola, dated 1932, up to the posthumous volume, Desinenze, published in 1977, one year after the writer’ s death. It is fundamental, in a global perspective on the metrical aspects, to delve on the interaction between art and literature. Gatto wrote several essays about painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre and cinema. His books were often illustrated by contemporary artists, like Fulvio Bianconi (Allegretto, 1957), Carlo Carrà (Venezia, 1964) and Graziana Pentich (Il vaporetto, 1963), the poet’s mate. The aesthetic concept that emerges from his articles and from the collaborations with some painters allows to adapt some categories used for the arts of XIX and XX centuries (Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract and Informal Art) to describe the metric of Gatto’s poems. Gatto used various poetic forms, both regular and closed (especially sonnets, quatrains of hendecasyllables and canzonette of settenari) and written in free verses (short and long ones). The connection among the different types of verses is similar to the dynamic aspects of painting, sculpture and cinema. The book in which explicitly appears the importance of the parallelism between painting and literature is Rime di viaggio per la terra dipinta, a collection of 100 poems created with 100 pictures painted by Gatto himself.

The current study investigated vowel quality in Miami Cuban Spanish, looking specifically at the influence of English on the Spanish vowel system. The vowel production of eleven Miami Cubans from three generations is investigated. Subjects include six males and five females. Three different elicitation instruments were used. The first was a brief sociolinguistic interview, the second was a story that the participants were asked to read aloud. Carrier words were embedded into the story in order to obtain multiple samples of both stressed and unstressed vowels. For the third instrument, subjects were asked to read a list of words with careful attention to their pronunciation. The reading list contained the same words that were embedded in the story of the first task. These three instruments were repeated in both Spanish and in English in order to investigate possible English influence in the Spanish vowel system of these bilinguals.

Les vers latins ne furent pas un pensum pour tous les collégiens du XIXe siècle. Ils eurent un rôle récréatif dans l’enseignement des humanités, au sein duquel ils favorisaient l’étude des poètes de langue française, parfois contemporains, par le biais de traductions. Ils furent une introduction aux belles-lettres pour quelques-uns, dont Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Baudelaire, Bourget et Rimbaud. Des périodiques et des recueils de poésie néo-latine, qui n’étaient pas tous scolaires, poursuivaient une tradition humaniste privilégiant l’épigramme et les jeux versifiés. Ces publications reflétaient également l’évolution des formes poétiques : essoufflement de l’épopée et de la fable, fortune de l’ode civique et des genres didactiques et descriptifs, recherche d’une synthèse entre esthétique des belles-lettres et philosophie sensualiste, succès du romantisme lamartinien. Dans cette tradition, le poème de Baudelaire « Franciscae meae laudes », dont la fortune se confondit avec celle du latin décadent dans la littérature française, constituait un cas à part. Durant la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, la période 1750-1830 fut considérée comme l’âge d’or des humanités. Elle fut l’apogée de l’institution Sainte-Barbe et du concours général et correspondit à une génération d’élèves et de professeurs arrivés aux responsabilités à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et revenus au pouvoir après la Révolution. La poésie de cette période eut une inspiration commune, en latin ou en français
Latin verses were not an extra duty for all students in the nineteenth century. They had a recreational role in teaching humanities, as they favoured the study of French poets, sometimes the contemporary ones, through translations. They were in deed an introduction to the belles-lettres for some students like Sainte-Beuve, Musset, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Bourget. Periodicals and neo-Latin publications, which were not all bound to school, followed a humanist tradition favouring epigrams and versified games. These publications also reflected the evolution of poetic forms : the slowing of epic and fable, the health of civic ode and didactic and descriptive poems, search for a synthesis between aesthetics of belles-lettres and philosophy sensualist, fame of Lamartine’s romanticism. In this tradition, Baudelaire's poem "Franciscae meae laudes", whose success was bound to that of the decadent Latin in French literature, was a special case. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the 1750-1830’s period was considered as the golden age of the humanities. It was the apogee of the Sainte-Barbe’s institution and the concours général and corresponded to a generation of students and teachers who arrived to political responsibilities in the late eighteenth century and returned to power after the Revolution. The poetry of this period had a common inspiration, in Latin or in French

How do we understand our encounter with ambivalent or visceral aesthetic feelings—textual environments, moods, and atmospheres—if they do not solely belong to the representation of individual or collective emotions? This dissertation proposes a concept of “the feeling of form” to approach these aesthetic feelings as formal dynamics, such as restless orientations and rhythmic intensities. How can literary forms have feelings, and where—or is it necessary—to locate the textual body and the subject of these feelings? The goal of my dissertation is not to show what specific neurological procedures are involved in the emotive-cognitive entanglement between the text and the reader, but to understand “form” as a verb—forming, shaping, mediating, transmitting—whose dynamics and actions manifest the narrative form’s visceral aesthetic feelings, and to examine how such feelings bear significant cultural and political currency. Reading formal dynamics as aesthetic feelings also invites us to adjust our usual gaze at “form” away from categories coined by various formalisms, such as “genre,” “structure,” “focalization,” or “style.” In doing so, we are able to reimagine these categories as part of the dynamics of formal reorientations, rhythms, and syntactic intensities, and to open ourselves up to the impersonal agency and criticality of literary forms. Based on these convictions, my dissertation argues that reading for the feeling of form allows us to experience how literary forms transmit and regenerate volatile experiences of history in ways that complicate, supplement, or subvert the explicit representation of historical events and temporality in a literary text. In this dissertation, I focus on the relationship between the feeling of form and the experience of various histories in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End (1924–1928), Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair (1932–1934), Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet (1957–60), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s single-volume novel The Unconsoled (1995). Chapter One traces how nauseous form in Parade’s End allows us to experience wartime and postwar anxiety through Christopher Tietjens’s self-revolting and incoherent consciousness. Chapter Two examines how the deterioration of rhythm in A Scot’s Quair transmits a historical experience of gradual suffocation intricately linked with Scotland’s political and ecological disasters. In a brief Coda, I conclude my project by looking at how The Alexandria Quartet and The Unconsoled manifest weakened and depleted feelings of form, and how these feelings prompt us to rethink the relationship of the feeling of form to European heteronormative ideology and the ethics of community formation. The Unconsoled (1995), in particular, serves as a twofold limit case of the feeling of form: first, as a limit case of the futile feeling of form, and second, as a limit case of the distinction between the novel form and the novel series form. This twofold limit case speaks to its own historical experience of futility at the end of history, and responds to the aesthetic and ideological legacies of early twentieth-century experimental novel series.
Graduate
2021-05-12

This study examines the specific aspects of the reception of Russian formalism and the development of the Formal method in Soviet Ukrainian culture in the 1920s - the beginning of 1930s. Russian formalism in the process of reception becomes an important tool for the "modernization" of national culture and, as a result, an instrument for a new phase in the construction of national cultural identity. On that basis, the cultural-historical and ideological context of the development of Ukrainian literary criticism, criticism and (partially) literature of the late 19th - first decades of the 20th century is consistently reconstructed in eight chapters of the work. The first chapter highlights theoretical aspects of the study, reviews critical literature, reconstructs the history of reception of Russian formalism in Russian and Western criticism and the history of literature. The second chapter addresses the historical and theoretical premises of the reception of Formal theory in Ukrainian culture. The next chapter discusses historical and political context of the development of literature and literary criticism in 1917-1920 using the example of multinational post-revolutionary Kiev; a brief review of the theoretical and historical works of the 1920s also appears here. A special focus is put on the...

This dissertation examines the place of Hellenism in nineteenth-century literature as a background to my discussion of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poetic treatment of Apollo, the Greek god of poetry and of the sun. My point of departure is the common view that sees the Victorians’ fascination with Hellenism as representing a collective sense of dissatisfaction with Christian culture, its politics, and morality. Raised High Anglican, Swinburne was an avid and devoted believer throughout his early life. However, a spiritual crisis which he experienced during his years in Oxford in the late 1850s caused him to grow extremely critical of Christianity and eventually forsake his faith by his mid-twenties. Yet Swinburne’s rejection of Christianity did not result in his rejection of spirituality. And indeed, throughout his poetic career, Swinburne searches for alternative deities that would replace the Christian God. One such deity is Apollo, who becomes a pivotal figure in Swinburne poetry starting with the 1878 publication of Poems and Ballads and in the collections that follow. Focusing on seven major poems written during a period of almost three decades, I show how Apollo serves as the main deity in an emerging Swinburnean mythology. Swinburne’s Apollonian myth, I show, consists of three stages: the invocation and conceptualization of Apollo as a new god by manipulating Biblical and Classical notions of divinity; the formation of a unique Apollonian theology; and the shift toward a nihilistic agnostic vision of spirituality. Each stage, I argue, presents the development of Swinburne’s thought, as well as his deep engagement with nineteenth-century debates about religion, mythography, and the reformative function of poetry. As such, my dissertation has two main purposes: first, expanding the scope of Swinburne scholarship by providing a new thematic context for his later poetry; and second, reclaiming Swinburne’s place in nineteenth-century intellectual history by showing his contribution and involvement in discussions about some of the period’s most central issues.

This study gives the Zulu's views and ideas about celestial bodies and associated natural phenomena and how they illustrate features in both the oral and written literature. It sketches various focussing mainly on The concentration is conceptions about the whole universe celestial bodies and natural phenomena. on the sun, moon, stars, thunder and lightning in poetry and prose both modern and traditional. Emphasis is on the fact that Zulus do not perceive celestial bodies as mere bodies but assign certain beliefs and philosophies to them. In examining these different conceptions, Western as well as African literary theories have been used in this study. I~ ~r=rli~ional izibongo amakhosi are associated with the sun, the moon as well as the stars. Their warriors' attack is associated with the thunderstorm. These celestial bodies are also used as determinants of time in terms of day and night, seasons and different times for different daily chores. In modern poetry these bodies are mainly associated with God and in some instances they are referred to as God himself. In prose they are used as determinants of time and are also used figuratively to describe certain circumstances. The study gives an idea of how Zulus in general perceive these celestial bodies and natural phenomena.
African Languages
D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This thesis sets off from an a priori hypothetical position that the universality of certain language features, particularly poetic expression, provides an opportunity for syncretism in the reading, analysis, explication, and interpretation of African literature, specifically oral poetry, our teleological point being the formulation of a syncretic approach. In the first chapter we undertake an overview of the debate which has been ensuing among 'African' critics in the search of an 'African' poetics. We proceed, in the second and third chapters, to undertake a study of two 'Western' schools of thought, namely Formalist-Structuralism and New Criticism, with a view to setting the critical theories and practice of some major protagonists of these schools of thought against sample readings of African oral poetry. In the fourth and fifth chapters we proceed to select and analyse some of the most prominent critics of African oral poetry, and undertake detailed case studies of their critical assumptions and practice, in retrospective comparison with the theoretical paradigms and practical readings dealt with in chapters two and three. In the sixth and final chapter we assess the syncretic approach suggested, together with its implications for the future research and teaching of African oral poetry. Our findings suggest that the case studies of critiques of African oral poetry reveal certain shortcomings which might have been strengthened by a perspicacious awareness of Formalist-Structuralist and New Critical methodology. From this postpriori perspective we suggest a syncretic approach which, in its sensitivity to the idiosyncratic features of African languages, will at the same time acknowledge, adopt and adapt sophisticated poetical analyses which have been developed by Western poetics. Our findings also suggest specific ways in which Western standards could be evaluated with a considerable degree of exactitude. We conclude by, inter alia, opening directions of research which could advance the debate towards an African poetics beyond doctrinaire wrangle, so that progress can be made through further close studies of other schools of thought and theories in order to assess their applicability and/or adaptability to African poetry and other genres.
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature
D. Litt et Phil (Theory of Literature)

Zasadniczym przedmiotem rozprawy są dzieje Moskiewskiego Koła Lingwistycznego (dalej: MKL), którego członkowie od 1915 roku stawiali fundamenty pod budowę nowoczesnego, zorientowanego językoznawczo literaturoznawstwa teoretycznego. Celem pracy nie jest jednak wyłącznie analiza koncepcji poszczególnych uczonych związanych z Kołem, lecz także prześledzenie procesu konstytuowania się teorii literatury jako autonomicznej dyscypliny literaturoznawczej, mającej określony przedmiot badań, dysponującej odpowiednimi narzędziami oraz terminologią. Równie ważne zadanie, które postawiła sobie autorka rozprawy, to wskazanie, w jaki sposób niektóre koncepcje wypracowane przez członków MKL migrowały zarówno w przestrzeni geograficznej, jak i dyscyplinarnej, dostarczając inspiracji dla najpłodniejszych nurtów w XX-wiecznej humanistyce. W tym kontekście niezbędne jest prześledzenie roli badaczy związanych z kołem moskiewskim, którzy na emigracji, w większości przypadków wymuszonej okolicznościami politycznymi, rozwijali problemy dyskutowane na zebraniach MKL w innych „kolektywach myślowych”, by przywołać terminologię Ludwika Flecka. Najbardziej reprezentatywny dla tych przemieszczeń, przestrzennych i dyscyplinarnych, jest przypadek Romana Jakobsona oraz Praskiego Koła Lingwistycznego, które nawiązywało do MKL nazwą, strukturą, obszarami badawczymi, a także współdzieliło część członków (Jakobson, Piotr Bogatyriow, Siergiej Karcewski, Nikołaj Trubiecki). Nie można jednak pominąć kolektywów myślowych, które czerpały z dziedzictwa MKL niebezpośrednio, m.in. kół lingwistycznych Kopenhaskiego i Nowojorskiego, tartusko-moskiewskiej szkoły semiotyki czy grupy tak zwanych manipulistów w Izraelu, dokąd w latach 60. i 70. wyemigrowało ze Związku Radzieckiego wielu badaczy. W tych przypadkach transfer kulturowy i naukowy był odroczony w czasie i w przestrzeni, zawsze jednak uwarunkowany, „spleciony” z prywatnymi biografiami poszczególnych uczonych, których wybory życiowe wpływały w takim samym stopniu na rozwój wymienionych nurtów, jak wypracowywane przez nich koncepcje. Wyśledzenie i wysupłanie tych zależności również wchodzi w zakres zawartych w rozprawie rozważań. Rekonstrukcja inicjalnego etapu kształtowania się profesjonalnego literaturoznawstwa teoretycznego uwzględnia badanie dokumentów źródłowych – nie tylko archiwalnych, ale też wspomnień, utworów literackich, publicystyki, rozpraw naukowych – jako wypowiedzi kulturowych, które powstały w określonej sytuacji biograficznej, społecznej i politycznej. Odtworzenia okoliczności i motywacji ich powstania (a także interpretowania) eksponuje tezę, że w humanistyce nowe koncepcje to często zapomniane lub nieco zmodyfikowane dawne pomysły. Przypadek MKL dowodzi, że intuicje naukowe młodych uczonych z Moskwy wyrażane już w drugiej dekadzie minionego stulecia na wiele dziesięcioleci wyprzedzały wiele nurtów XX-wiecznej humanistyki (m.in. poetykę strukturalną, statystyczne badania nad wierszem, studia miejskie czy socjolingwistykę). Podjęcie dyskusji nad dziedzictwem intelektualnym koła moskiewskiego umożliwia zatem reinterpretację historii początków nowoczesnego literaturoznawstwa teoretycznego – konieczną w świetle dostępnych, choć wciąż słabo rozpoznanych świadectw. Rozprawa składa się z czterech rozdziałów i aneksu, który zawiera komentowany przekład czterech protokołów z zebrań MKL, pochodzących z archiwum Koła. Przetłumaczone dokumenty stanowią nie tylko materiał ilustracyjny dla omówionych zagadnień, lecz także odsłaniają tryb pracy moskiewskich badaczy. Analiza protokołów pokazuje spór naukowy in statu nascendi, prezentuje używaną wówczas terminologię (często odmienną od współczesnej), wskazuje aktualne problemy badania literatury i języka, a także sposoby ich rozwiązywania. Stanowi punkt wyjścia dla zawartych w rozprawie rozważań i – zwrotnie – ich materiałowe zwieńczenie.
The core aim of the thesis “The Lost Link: The Role of the Moscow Linguistic Circle in Establishing Modern Literary Studies” is the history of the Moscow Linguistic Circle (MLC) whose members have laid the foundation for the modern, linguistic-oriented literary theory. The goal of the thesis is not only to analyse the ideas of individual scientists associated with the Circle, but also to follow the process of establishing the literary theory as an autonomous scientific discipline with its specific research subject, appropriate tools, and terminology. An equally important task is a demonstration of how some of the concepts developed by the members of the MLC migrated in a geographical and disciplinary space, providing inspiration for the most prolific trends in the 20th century humanities. In this context, it is necessary to trace the role of the researchers associated with the Circle, who developed ideas discussed at meetings of MLC in other “thought collectives” (to recall the terminology of Ludwik Fleck) in exile, in most cases forced by political circumstances. The most representative of these migrations is the case of Roman Jakobson and the Prague Linguistic Circle, which referred to the MLC with its name, structure, research areas and also shared some members (apart from Jakobson – Petr Bogatyrev, Sergei Kartsevsky, Nikolai Trubetzkoy). Some of the “thought collectives” drew on the heritage of the MLC indirectly, including the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen and Linguistic Circle of New York, the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics and the so-called Manipulation School in Israel, where many researchers immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s. In these cases cultural and scientific transfer was postponed in time and space, but always conditioned, “entangled” with the biographies of individual scholars. Their life choices influenced the development of the mentioned trends in the same way as the concepts they developed. Tracking these dependencies also falls within the scope of the thesis. The reconstruction of the initial stage of the history of the literary theory takes into account the study of source documents – memories, literary works, journalism, scientific dissertations. They are interpreted as cultural facts that arose in a specific biographical, social and political situation. Reconstruction of these circumstances emphasises that new concepts in the humanities are often forgotten or slightly modified old ideas. The case of the MLC illustrates that the scientific intuitions of young scholars from Moscow were often ahead of many trends in the 20th century humanities (e.g. structuralism, statistical poetics, urban studies, sociolinguistics). For this reason the discussion on the intellectual heritage of the Moscow Linguistic Circle is also the reinterpretation of the history of the modern literary theory – necessary in the light of the available, yet poorly recognized archival documents. The dissertation consists of four chapters and an annex with a commented translation of four protocols from the archive of the Circle. They are not only illustrative material for the topics discussed in the dissertation, but they also reveal the mode of work of the Moscow researchers. The analysis of the protocols shows the scientific dispute in statu nascendi, presents the terminology, points to current problems in the study of literature and language, as well as ways to solve them. It is a starting point for the considerations contained in the dissertation and also its materialised conclusion.

This dissertation reveals a twentieth-century tradition of poetic formalism that positions race, gender, and sexuality as formal concerns, and further, as key factors in the development of contemporary formal poetics. My readings of three contemporary poets, Akilah Oliver, Sharon Bridgforth, and Alice Notley, combine formalist analysis with cultural approaches, including critical race theory and queer theory, to show how contemporary poets use form to confront racist, sexist, and homophobic representational traditions and to reshape identity discourse. This project intervenes in a critical tradition that divorces poetic form from political context and neglects formal aspects of poetries that engage with social identities, especially African American poetry. As Notley, Oliver, and Bridgforth portray racial, gender, and sexual diversity—including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered bodies—they invent and remake forms, genres, and textual strategies, from the feminist epic to the performance novel. These new forms exceed the strategies of rupture, fracture, and fragmentation that marked many modern and postmodern experiments and, in fact, reveal the limitations of rupture as a means of political critique. Instead, they widen the field of formalism, incorporating performance genres (epic, storytelling, blues) and new textual strategies to call attention to the histories of bodies and their representations, assert interdependent identities, promote pluralism, and insist on the interrelationship of literature, orality, and bodily experience.
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