Broken English/breaking English: A Study of Contemporary Poetries in EnglishBroken English/Breaking English discusses the work of some prominent contemporary poets writing in English. It examines the challenges to a poetic discourse that was claimed in immediately post-Second World War England to be pure and English. The study begins with a scrutiny of what Donald Davie called Purity of Diction, and offers a contrary view generated earlier by emergent American (literary) English in the work of Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams. There follows consideration of the clash between Alfred Alvarez labeled the Gentility Principle and American-sourced confessionalism, before the debate moves to the contemporary period. Successive chapters are devoted to women's poetry as offering a challenge to Davie-style pure English; to the new poetic dictions breaking in ethnicminority poetry in England; to work going on in English on the British geographical frontiers - Northern Ireland and Scotland; and to poetry written in ex-British colonies and dominions, specifically Australia. Canterbury in New Zealand. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 7 |
Gentility and Its Alternatives | 30 |
Gendered Spaces and the New Poetry | 70 |
Copyright | |
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Broken English/breaking English: A Study of Contemporary Poetries in English Rob Jackaman No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Aboriginal Adrienne Rich Allen Ginsberg Alvarez American anthology argues assertion Australia barbarian becomes Bernard O'Dowd Bloodaxe breaking English British Poetry canon Caribbean certainly Collected Poems colonizing contemporary context course Crawford Creole cultural Davie's dictionary dominant discourse Dransfield Dunn Edwin Morgan Empire England English Literature English poetry essay Faber and Faber fact Fahey Fahey's female feminist Gaelic gentility Ginsberg glish guage Heaney's ibid identity imperial instance Ireland Irish language Leonard linguistic literally literary London Lowell Lowell's MacDiarmid male metaphor Morgan Movement Mudrooroo notes notion O'Dowd Oxford particularly patriarchal Penguin Books perhaps phallogocentric Philip Larkin poet poetic political Preoccupations Press quoted Rastafarianism rhyme Rich's Robert Rohlehr says Scotland Scottish Seamus Heaney seems significant silence standard English suggests Sylvia Plath tactic Ted Hughes tells tion Tony Harrison tradition University Verse voice W. N. Herbert Walt Whitman West Indian Westindian-British Williams women words Yeats Yoogum