Randall Jarrell, canonicity, multiplicity, travesty : the apocalyptic margins of the still, human center
Citation:
Michael Hinds, 'Randall Jarrell, canonicity, multiplicity, travesty : the apocalyptic margins of the still, human center', [thesis], Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of English, 2001, pp 265Download Item:
Abstract:
The thesis finds that Randall Jarrell's writing fails to meet the expectations of the
American canon and travesties the aesthetic conventions of American literary
modernism. It is often kitsch or melodramatic, it can be unbearably twee, as a novelist he
failed to produce narrative, and as a poet he occasionally loses all sense of form or
appropriate duration. Crucially and controversially, this analysis is read here as
signifying Jarrell's success as a writer, as the flaunting of such conventions was his aim.
Contrary to his reputation as a critic who stood for conservatively arch-modemist and
high-canonist values, this thesis discovers a calculating maverick who made aesthetic
choices rather than errors in judgement, even when it meant producing the kind of vulgar
texts that he was supposed to hold in such scorn. Jarrell was committed to travesty and
obsessed imaginatively with failure, even if it meant catastrophe for his canonical
reception as a writer rather than a gifted and eloquent reader of Whitman and Frost.
Author: Hinds, Michael
Advisor:
Matterson, StephenQualification name:
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)Publisher:
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of EnglishNote:
TARA (Trinity’s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.iePrint thesis water damaged as a result of the Berkeley Library Podium flood 25/10/2011
Type of material:
thesisAvailability:
Full text availableKeywords:
English, Ph.D., Ph.D. Trinity College DublinMetadata
Show full item recordLicences: