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The Confessional Purgation of the Soul in the Poetry of Robert Lowell
Department of English The Flamekeeper: The Confessional Purgation of the Soul in the Poetry of Robert Lowell Ryan Jurison Degree of Bachelor, 15 points Literature Spring Term, 2020 Supervisor: Claudia Egerer Abstract This essay is a critical textual analysis of the poetry of Robert Lowell with focus on religious symbolism used in his work, and the Catholic theology which informed it. This results in a new, contrasting interpretation to the conventional view that he had abandoned his religious focus by mid-career, while accounting for his own assessment that he had not. Insights gained through this analysis, combined with those relating to Lowell’s personal history, reframe his confessional poetry while bolstering this claim. Through this study, poems selected from Lord Weary’s Castle, The Mills of the Kavanaughs, Life Studies and For the Union Dead are reinterpreted in order to explore the consequences of what Lowell could have intended with this stylistic modification, and discover the religiosity that he claimed was hidden. Lowell’s confessional poetry up until 1964 is examined and recast as the anguished wails of a Catholic soul in Purgatory. This fresh approach to one of America’s finest twentieth-century poets provides a novel foundation for the reinterpretation of the entirety of Lowell’s professional oeuvre. Keywords: Robert Lowell; American poetry; Catholic Theology; Religious Symbolism; Purgation; Purgatory; Land of Unlikeness; Lord Weary’s Castle; The Mills of the Kavanaughs; Life Studies; For the Union Dead Jurison 1 What soul is lost that does not think itself irrevocably so? When examining the poetry of Robert Lowell, and more specifically the equally lauded but outwardly contrasting work done from the beginning of his career to the middle, one cannot help but consider this question. -
A Study .Of Robert Lowell's Life Studies
The Mode of Private Vision: A Study . of Robert Lowell's Life Studies Kim, Kil-Joong 1. Earlier Lowell: Lord Weary's Castle Life Studies (1959), coming after Land of Unlikeness (1944), Lord Weary's Castle(l946) , and Mills ofthe Kavanaughs(1951), marks a significant development or change in the poetry. of Robert Lowell. So before we discuss Life Studies, which is the main subject of this paper, it would be proper to attempt to define what was the characteristic concern of earlier Lowell. For this purpose, we will start, for the span of a few pages, by con centrating on Lord Weary's Castle. It seems to embody the greater and surer power of vision and language than the other two. The general impression of his earlier .poems was that of agonized violence and visionary energy directed against the darker aspects of the socio-historical milieu of modern times. Lowell had been a Roman Catholic convert since his graduation from Kenyon College, and its influence had visibly worked into his poetry. He made use of many Biblical themes and images, which added to the texture of his poetry. Lowell's poetry was dra matic and colloquial, ambiguous and paradoxical, but compared with the new poems, his figures and allusions were much denser and his tone more heightened. His rather rigorous iambic pentameters were questioning in grand Apocalyptic terms the contingencies of the moment and the meanings of the particular heritage in which he lived. On the one hand, the poet just survived the great world war with his memory of serving a six-month prison term as a conscientious objector. -
School of Unlikeness: the Creative Writing Workshop and American Poetry
School of Unlikeness: The Creative Writing Workshop and American Poetry Sarah Cohen A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: Brian Reed, Chair Jeanne Heuving Jessica Burstein Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English University of Washington Abstract School of Unlikeness: American Poetry and the Creative Writing Workshop Sarah Cohen Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Brian Reed English This dissertation is a study of the creative writing workshop as a shaping institution of American poetry in the twentieth century. It takes as its starting point the observation that in the postwar period the rise of academic creative writing programs introduced profound material changes into the lives of American poets, as poetry became professionalized within the larger institution of the university. It goes on to argue that poets responded to these changes in ways that are directly legible in their work, producing a variety of poetic interrogations of the cultural and psychological effects of the reflexive professional self-fashioning that became, partially through the workshop, the condition of modern literary life. In other words, as poets became students and teachers, their classroom and career experiences occasioned new kinds of explorations of identity, performance, vocation, authority, and the cultural status of poets and poetry. The cluster of concerns linked to the evolving institution of "creative writing" shows stylistically diverse works to be united, and also resonates with and helps to clarify the major debates within the poetry world over the past decades between the camps of the "mainstream" and the "avant- garde" or, as Robert Lowell put it in 1959, "the cooked and the raw." My dissertation examines a variety of iterations of the relationship between workshop culture and poetic production through case studies of the poets Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, and Jorie Graham. -
Robert Lowell and the Religious Sublime
HenryHart RobertLowell and the ReligiousSublime A J^JLs a student in his last year at St. Mark's, Robert Lowell published an interpre- tation of an allegorical drawing by his friend, Francis Parker, which reveals an early enchantment with religious sublimity. Although the piece in Vindex is characterized more by youthful idealism than hermeneutic skill, it is prophetic of the sort of poetry he would soon be writing. Lowell's explication begins with a grand moral pronounce- ment intended to separate the saints from the fools: 'The idea that we wish to make clear is that tremendous labor and great intelligence, if applied toward the advance- ment of evil or petty ends, are of no avail." He then proceeds to excoriate fourteen types of misguided intellectuals who surround the central figure of "St. Simon, the Stylite, a symbol of true knowledge." The fools are generally pedants and scientists, "men of authority who misuse their power" (129), and no doubt modelled with in- subordinate glee after Lowell's teachers. The young Lowell, full of sanctimonious ambitions, has his eye on the sublime "St. Simon [who] is elevated high above everyone else by comprehension of the true light. The book and the pen symbolize real intellectual attainment, while the plumb line signifies a quite natural feeling of superiority; but more important, his insecurity. From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step." The sublime from Longinus and Burke to Kant and Harold Bloom has always been a measure of power and has always involved ranking that power according to a hierarchy of values. -
Robert Lowell's Life-Writing and Memory Gye-Yu Kang Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2003 Robert Lowell's life-writing and memory Gye-Yu Kang Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kang, Gye-Yu, "Robert Lowell's life-writing and memory" (2003). LSU Master's Theses. 1420. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/1420 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ROBERT LOWELL’S LIFE-WRITING AND MEMORY A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of English by Gye-Yu Kang B.A., Cheju National University, 1986 M.A., Korea University, 1995 August 2003 Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………….. iii Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….... 1 Chapter One Memory as an Imaginative Reconstruction: 91 Revere Street …... 4 Chapter Two Life Changed to Landscape: Life Studies ………………………... 17 Chapter Three The Past Changes More Than the Present: Day by Day ………. 39 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………... 52 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………. 55 Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………… 58 ii Abstract This thesis examines Robert Lowell’s use of memory in such autobiographical works as Life Studies and Day by Day. In those volumes, Lowell returns to recollect his private past; his act of remembering becomes the poetic process by which Lowell is able to create the retrospective truth of his life. -
Personal Experiences in Robert Lowell's Poetry
RESEARCH ARTICLE “IF I STOP WRITING, I STOP BREATHING”:PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN ROBERT LOWELL’S POETRY Lovleen Kaur Baidwan (Ph.D Research Scholar, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University,Chandigarh.) ABSTRACT Confessional poetry started in the late 1950s and early 1960s in America, with notable poets as Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and W.D. Snodgrass. It was personal poetry, a confession made of one’s personal and closed details of one’s life, his relations, his family etc. The focus was on personal experiences of illness, deaths, broken relations etc, the topics that remained untouched before. Robert Lowell was an important confessional poet, and his most noted collection of poems, Life Studies left a deep impact on other confessional poets. This paper focuses on the individual experiences of the poet and its link with his poetry. His personal struggles became themes of his poems. His battle with mental illness, his failed marriage becomes basis for his poetry. The paper aims to study his Life Studies, and highlight his personal experiences and emotions in his collection of poems. The study would highlight the private sphere of Robert Lowell in his poems, and study Lowell as one of the greatest confessional poets. The ideas of Robert Lowell as expressed in his poetry, gives details about his personal life. Not only his life but also the reflection of the modern man and society, his ancestory, and how the poet opposes Eliot’s concept of impersonality. Keywords: Personal poetry, Confessional poetry, Impersonality. Citation: APA Baidwan,L.K. (2018) If I Stop Writing, I Stop Breathing : Personal Experiences in Robert Lowell’s Poetry.Veda’s Journal of English Language and Literature-JOELL, 5(2), 120- 124. -
Lowell's Tropes of Falling, Rising, Standing: a Response to Frank J
Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/2010) Lowell’s Tropes of Falling, Rising, Standing: A Response to Frank J. Kearful* HENRY HART Frank Kearful has written an insightful essay on some of Lowell’s fundamental preoccupations in Lord Weary’s Castle. I was impressed by the critic’s investigation of Lowell’s poetics—of his tropes, metrical patterns, rhymes, and allusions. I was also impressed by the way he explained Lowell’s idiosyncratic Christianity. Lowell’s religious be- liefs were always eccentric (he once called himself a “Christian athe- ist” [Mariani 359]), and Kearful helps us understand how he ex- pressed those beliefs in one of his most overtly religious books. Since the critical consensus has been that Lowell’s dense, forbidding style in Lord Weary’s Castle was a mistake, and that the freer, more accessible, more overtly autobiographical style of Life Studies was a correction, it’s noble of Kearful to pay tribute to the book that launched Lowell’s career. In my opinion, Lord Weary’s Castle is Lowell’s most consistently accomplished book. All his other books, including Land of Unlikeness, which was published in a limited edition shortly before Lord Weary’s Castle, contain masterful poems, but no book is as consistently brilliant as Lord Weary’s Castle. As a response to Kearful’s essay, I’d like to make a number of com- ments that point to ways his discussions might be expanded. Since Lowell studied under and was deeply influenced by the Southern Agrarians John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, it would be interesting to explore how Lowell’s obsession with ‘standing’ and taking ideo- *Reference: Frank J. -
BERRYMAN and LOWELL: the ART of LOSING Berrytnan and Lo-Well
BERRYMAN AND LOWELL: THE ART OF LOSING Berrytnan and Lo-well The Art of Losing Stephen Matterson M MACMILLAN PRESS © Stephen John Matterson 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Dat a Matterson, Stephen Berryman and Lowell: the art of losing. 1. Lowell, Robert-Criticism and interpretation 2. Berryman, John Criticism and interpretation I. Title 811'.52 PS3523.089Z/ ISBN 978-1-349-09018-1 ISBN 978-1-349-09016-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09016-7 For Jean with all of my love Contents Acknowledgements ix Chronologies xi Introduction: Tumbles and Leaps 1 1 Beginning in Wisdom 15 2 Towards a Rhetoric of Destitution 35 3 Excellence and Loss 51 4 History and Seduction 70 5 Defeats and Dreams 92 Notes and References 107 Index 111 Vll Acknowledgements I should like to thank Frances Arnold, my editor at Macmillan, and the outside reader whose advice and comments helped to shape the book. -
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY of AMERICA American Poetry at Mid
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA American Poetry at Mid-Century: Warren, Jarrell, and Lowell A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of English School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Joan Romano Shifflett Washington, D.C. 2013 American Poetry at Mid-Century: Warren, Jarrell, and Lowell Joan Romano Shifflett, Ph.D. Director: Ernest Suarez, Ph.D. This dissertation explores the artistic and personal connections between three writers who helped change American poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, and Robert Lowell. All three poets maintained a close working relationship throughout their careers, particularly as they experimented with looser poetic forms and more personal poetry in the fifties and after. Various studies have explored their careers within sundry contexts, but no sustained examination of their relationships with one another exists. In focusing on literary history and aesthetics, this study develops an historical narrative that includes close-readings of primary texts within a variety of contexts. Established views of formalism, high modernism, and the New Criticism are interwoven into the study as tools for examining poetic structure within selected poems. Contexts concerning current criticism on these authors are also interlaced throughout the study and discussed in relation to particular historical and aesthetic issues. Having closely scrutinized the personal exchanges and creative output of all three poets, this study illuminates the significance of these writers’ relationships to American poetry at mid- century and beyond. Though the more experimental schools of poetry would not reach their height until the 1950s, by the 1940s Warren, Jarrell, and Lowell were already searching for a new aesthetic. -
"New England Reformers," an American Tragedy, and "After the Surprising Conversions" Cleo Wynnette Dailey Iowa State University
Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1979 The American religious reformer as viewed in "New England reformers," An American tragedy, and "After the surprising conversions" Cleo Wynnette Dailey Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Dailey, Cleo Wynnette, "The American religious reformer as viewed in "New England reformers," An American tragedy, and "After the surprising conversions"" (1979). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 7902. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/7902 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The American religious reformer as viewed in "New England Reformers," An American Tragedy, and "After the Surprising Conversions" by Cleo %nnBtte Dailey A Thesis Sutodttod to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of MASTER CF ARTS Majcr: English Signatures have been redacted for privacy Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1979 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCriON 1 EMERSON'S "NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS" 9 DREISER'S AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY 18 LOWELL'S "AFTER THE SURPRISING CONVERSICSIS" 29 CONCLUSION 38 NOTES U-2 BIHLIOGRAPHT 50 APPENDIX. A: OUTLINE OF EMERSCSI'S "NEW ENCJLAND REFORMERS" 55 APPENDIX B: "AFTER THE SURPRISING CONVERSICajS" 57 APPENDIX C; EXCERPT FROM: NARRATIVE OF THE SURPRISING CONVERSIONS 59 INTRODUCTION Definition of Terms "Refonn" ineans what it says. -
Rania Saber Ahmed Abdel Rahim 81
RANIA SABER AHMED ABDEL RAHIM 81 A STUDY OF HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF THE CONFESSIONAL POETRY IN ROBERT LOWELL’S LIFE STUDIES Rania Saber Ahmed Abdel Rahim JAMIA MILIA ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY, New Delhi, INDIA Faculty of Humanities/English Department ICCR Scholarship/African Scheme (Egypt) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Robert Lowell, the iconic American Poet, moves with his Confessional poetry, notably the poetic volume Life Studies (1959) from the ―raw‖ to the ―cooked‖. Confessional poetry is similar to the art of confession. Moreover, the historical poetic pieces implied more than the mere gathering of fact and figures. For Lowell history manifested itself in the affairs of men and it is a persistent and violent force. Such a view is not entirely optimistic, springing directly from this view is Lowell's deep sense of loss, failure, alienation, helplessness and a feeling of entrapment in a world not of his making. In the light of the New Historicism approach, Lowell managed to perceive the literary text as a communal product which sought to reconnect itself to its cultural context. He did not think only of the past but took history forward into the present with all its discourse on culture, and its components, religious and political tradition of the place itself. Hence, in order to study the confessional poetry, historical aspects and the consequences of their psychoanalytic literary approach objectively play a significant role. Key Words: Confessional poetry, Robert Lowell, Poetic Volume Life Studies, New Historicism, Historical Aspects. Abstrak: Robert Lowell, Penyair Amerika yang ikonik, bergerak dengan puisi Confessional-nya, terutama volume puisi Life Studies (1959) dari "mentah" ke "dimasak". -
Robert Lowell: Secular, Puritan, and Agnostical
420 Religion, Literature and the Arts Project ROBERT LOWELL: SECULAR, PURITAN, AND AGNOSTICAL Chris Watson The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish: a savage servility slides by on grease. "For the Union Dead" ends with this image of Boston in the middle of the twentieth century. The poem has previously referred to other images from the present and the past, one of them the public monument representing Colonel Shaw and a regiment of black infantry who fought in the Civil War. The speaker comments that: their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat. The impact of the poem's ending is heightened by reference to its epigraph: "Relinquunt omnia servare Rem Publicam" almost meaning "they gave up everything to serve the Republic." LoweU links the debasement of language with other losses discerned in modern Boston modern America, the modern world. The poem refers to "graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic". Even a century ago, let alone in a Roman context, the notion of "republic" suggested a common commitment to the public realm, the common weal. Here is a society with no such focus, but one which has parodies of it, summed up as he implies elsewhere, by the values of the "Republican" Party, the dominant party in the USA of the 1950s. Likewise the notion of service is parodied by the grease-smooth ''servility" of this consuming and greedy society; this people is neither truly free nor does it serve; neither does it want to know about those who have, those whose service was intimately linked with their religious commitment.