Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2009 Unsuspected Romantic Legacies: Modern Reimagining of Romanticism in Williams, Levertov, & Nabokov Alejandra P. Vargas Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES UNSUSPECTED ROMANTIC LEGACIES: MODERN RE-IMAGINING OF ROMANTICISM IN WILLIAMS, LEVERTOV, & NABOKOV By ALEJANDRA P. VARGAS A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Eng.ish in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Phi.osophy D gr e A1arded: Summer Semester, 2009 The members of the committee approve the diss rtation of A. 6andra P. Vargas defended on May 14, 2009. __________________________________ James O:Rourke Professor Dir cting Dissertation __________________________________ Lauren Weingarden Outside Committee Member __________________________________ Eric Wa.ker Committee M mber __________________________________ H .en Burke Committee M mber Approved: _____________________________________ Ra.ph Berry, Chair, Eng.ish Department _____________________________________ Joseph Travis, Dean, Arts and Sciences The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committ e members. ii para mis padres – un soñador y una buena mujer, y para Angela – sobrina, alma infinita iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Abundant gratitude to the peop.e who affected this project in some way œ to my wise professors for their pati nce, to Nikochka for his tremendous love and support, to my tender friends œ Michel.e Mahana and Lisa Jennings œ for exc ..ent tea time study breaks and life- giving conversations, to Katie Meehan and Katie Yaun who pul.ed me out of my hermitage to ride my bike or br athe fresh air, and fina..y an acknow.edgement again to the professors who have most shaped my thoughts about Romanticism and poetic theory œ James O:Rourke, Eric Wa.ker, and Ra.ph Berry. My interest in Romanticism was further deepened and strengthened by the attention to nuance and minority persp ctives that these professors brought to their teaching; and the chapter on Wi..iam Car.os Wi..iams could not have b en 1ritten without Ra.ph Berry:s courses on theory and the avant-garde. My gratitude as w .. to H .en Burke, whose rigorous c.ass on Restoration p.ay1rights piqued my interest in the way that culture, politics, history, and the myst rious qua.ities of art can intersect to form a p.ay that transcends its time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract . vi I. INTRODUCTION . 1 II. CHAPTER 1 ~ AT THE SHIP:S PROW: WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS . 17 III. CHAPTER 2 ~ DENISE LEVERTOV: IMAGINATION, LYRICISM, AND NATURE . 48 IV. CHAPTER 3 ~ LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURYD AUDIENCES IN LOLITA AND ROUSSEAU:S CONFESSIONS. 83 REFERENCES . 118 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . 126 v ABSTRACT In exp.oring the degree to which Romantic legacies persist, this study concerns a particular type of poet and novelist. Typica. Romantic themes œ such as those of nature, solitude, or the sub.ime œ surface in numerous nin teenth and t1entieth century writers, such as the poetry of usua. susp cts like Emerson or Thoreau, but a.so in the poetry of less usua. but notab.e poets like EliFabeth Bishop, Wa..ace Stevens, or Wendel. B rry. A.though they would be worthy poetic subj cts, this study does not concern those poets. I am more interested in the .ess obvious examp.es of poets who derive their poetics partia..y from Romantic elements in 1ays that one might not suspect, and in ways that the poet hers .f might not suspect. This study concerns those less obvious.y Romantic writers who yet show signs that Romanticism has infi.trated their thought processes œ their poetics œ even despite their inc.ination to veer a1ay from Romantic traditions. Such writers œ in this case, Denise L vertov, Wi..iam Car.os Wi..iams, and V.adimir Nabokov œ are studied primari.y against the cont xt of Words1orthian and Keatsian poetics or against European Romanticism through Rousseau:s The Confessions. Thus, the nuance in L vertov and Wi..iams: poetics emerges more keenly 1hen exp.ored through the lens of Words1orthian poetics; and, Nabokov‘s Lolita provides amp.e territory for exp.oring Romantic —autobiographyH in the cont xt of c.aims that both Nabokov‘s protagonist and Rousseau make œ that they wi.. t .. nothing but the —truth.“ In some ways, Romanticism has infi.trated poetic thinking long after its time, and continues to persist in poetic language, phi.osophy, and practices; it persists even in the poetic thinking of writers who strive to create entir .y n 1 literary movements, or who define thems .ves against past Romantic poetics. In understanding and gaining a1areness of how and 1hy these l gacies persist, we gain an understanding of how our own writing 1orks and the effects it can have. We a.so appreciate 1hat it is that imp .s a literary period to persist sometimes against our own wi.., or our own expectations. vi INTRODUCTION Numerous modernist authors have b en studied in r .ationship to Romantic texts. Of course, modernism, with its emphasis on irony, un-sentimenta.ity, and the idea. of the impersona. author (epitomiFed by the image of James Joyc :s godlike artist, —paring his fingernai.sH in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), may seem far removed from Romantic .iterature. Nevertheless, there are enough deep connections bet1een the concepts and sty.e of Romantic authors and their modern descendants to make this r .ationship a promising fi .d for scholarship. According to David Perkins, —The int rp.ay in t1entieth-century poetry of the Modernist mode with the romantic tradition is a sub6ect for many booksH I171). More recent.y, French writer Joanny Moulin has observed in her study —Remnant Romanticism in Modern Poetry,“ that —it is possib.e to vi 1 the Romantic moment as the c.imax œ or mer .y the peripeteia, the instant of reversa. œ in a huge tragic p.ot that would have its exposition in the days of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and r ach its dénouement in the Modernist and Postmodernist ag H I3). And the essays in an entire section of Nicholas R$ :s book, Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, ca..ed GRomantic After.ives,“ examine aspects of Romanticism that persist into the modern era. Among the authors in this section of the book, Timothy Morton, for examp.e, interprets the Romantic movement as a precursor of ecologica. criticism and of modern environmenta.ism in genera.; Char.es RFepka discusses the inf.uence of sp cific Romantic poets, such as Words1orth, on modern poets like Robert Frost and EliFabeth Bishop; and Edward Larrissy considers modernism:s and even postmodernism:s debts to Romanticism. A.though, as Larrissy notes, some modernist poets exp.icit.y r 6ect Romanticism, such as Kings. y Amis in his poem, —Against Romanticism,“ there are strong links bet1een the Romantics and writers like Dy.an Thomas in England and A..en Ginsberg in the United States. This dissertation seeks to fol.ow in the tradition of linking the work of Romantic and modern authors œ in uncovering the l gacies of Romanticism that one may find in the work of 1 distinct.y modern literature. But whi.e doing this, I 1ish to avoid dea.ing with the usua. suspects œ modern authors whose .inks to the Romantic ag are w ..-known or expected. I am more interested in poets who are less obvious.y Romantic, and 1ho yet show signs that Romanticism has infi.trated their thought processes and their poetics, despite perhaps their inc.ination to veer a1ay from Romantic traditions. Thus I am inter st d less in the definite or conscious inf.uence of Romantic authors on modern ones, than in the infiltration of Romanticism into literary thinking long after its time œ into the thinking of writers who strive to creat entir .y n 1 literary movements, or who even define thems .ves against the attitudes and poetics of Romanticism. Sur .y typica. Romantic themes œ such as those of nature, solitude, individua.ism, the imagination, or the sub.ime œ surface in numerous poets of the 20th century, such as the poetry of Dy.an Thomas, EliFabeth Bishop, Wa..ace Stevens, e. e. cummings, or Wendel. Berry. In some cases, a modern writer connects so deep.y to Romanticism that more than one book can examine that poet in r .ation to Romanticism, as is the case with HaFard Adams: book, Blake and Yeats, and Harold B.oom:s Yeats, which inc.udes chapt rs on the inf.uence of Shel. y and B.ake on Yeats. This connection is, of course, not that surprising for a poet who, as Yeats did, dec.ared of hims .f and his generation, —1e w re the last romanticsH (in GCoole Park and Ba..y. H). In this dissertation, however, I am more interested in the less obvious examp.es of modern writers who derive their themes partia..y from Romantic elements in ways that one might not suspect, and in ways that perhaps even the writer hims .f might not suspect. In gaining a1areness of ho1 and why these l gacies of Romanticism persist, we gain an understanding of both Romanticism and of the intricate and diverse nature of modernism its .f. My argument is, then, that certain modern writ rs can be understood more ful.y through a comparison of their work to Romantic predecessors, and that this kind of comparison sheds light on the way that Romantic literature persists despite our own expectations.