Poetry as postmodern

According to Brian McHale, “Poetry from certain points of view had been postmodern before the postmodern, or had always already been postmodern.” This paper will examine exactly how poetry can be considered to be postmodern. It will undertake a study of Denis Donoghue’s On Eloquence, and attempt to...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zhang, Jieqiang
Other Authors: Cornelius Anthony Murphy
Format: Final Year Project (FYP)
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100054
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/7785
_version_ 1824455069654843392
author Zhang, Jieqiang
author2 Cornelius Anthony Murphy
author_facet Cornelius Anthony Murphy
Zhang, Jieqiang
author_sort Zhang, Jieqiang
collection NTU
description According to Brian McHale, “Poetry from certain points of view had been postmodern before the postmodern, or had always already been postmodern.” This paper will examine exactly how poetry can be considered to be postmodern. It will undertake a study of Denis Donoghue’s On Eloquence, and attempt to show how Donoghue’s description of literary eloquence correlates with postmodernism, in its yearning for non-referentiality, its impulse for anarchy, its desire for play, its devotion to pleasure, its creation of textual worlds, and its gesture toward language’s metaphoric nature. Since poetry is the textual art that exemplifies literary eloquence the most, it follows that poetry exhibits these postmodern tendencies most clearly, particularly postmodernism's interest in limits, its preoccupation with the metaphysics of absence. The paper will then make a case for how the poetic form is intimately concerned with silence, and thus, is inherently geared toward an exploration of the limits of language: how the poem’s visual shape can be seen as a metaphor for silence, how the poem is actually made of ruins—of the “ruined” poetic verse—and finally, how poetry’s near-condition of music is its desire to detach itself from the real world, into an imaginative textual reality.
first_indexed 2025-02-19T03:32:21Z
format Final Year Project (FYP)
id ntu-10356/100054
institution Nanyang Technological University
language English
last_indexed 2025-02-19T03:32:21Z
publishDate 2012
record_format dspace
spelling ntu-10356/1000542020-09-27T20:11:47Z Poetry as postmodern Zhang, Jieqiang Cornelius Anthony Murphy School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English According to Brian McHale, “Poetry from certain points of view had been postmodern before the postmodern, or had always already been postmodern.” This paper will examine exactly how poetry can be considered to be postmodern. It will undertake a study of Denis Donoghue’s On Eloquence, and attempt to show how Donoghue’s description of literary eloquence correlates with postmodernism, in its yearning for non-referentiality, its impulse for anarchy, its desire for play, its devotion to pleasure, its creation of textual worlds, and its gesture toward language’s metaphoric nature. Since poetry is the textual art that exemplifies literary eloquence the most, it follows that poetry exhibits these postmodern tendencies most clearly, particularly postmodernism's interest in limits, its preoccupation with the metaphysics of absence. The paper will then make a case for how the poetic form is intimately concerned with silence, and thus, is inherently geared toward an exploration of the limits of language: how the poem’s visual shape can be seen as a metaphor for silence, how the poem is actually made of ruins—of the “ruined” poetic verse—and finally, how poetry’s near-condition of music is its desire to detach itself from the real world, into an imaginative textual reality. Bachelor of Arts in English 2012-04-13T03:59:49Z 2019-12-06T20:15:50Z 2012-04-13T03:59:49Z 2019-12-06T20:15:50Z 2010 2010 Final Year Project (FYP) Zhang, J. (2010). Poetry as Postmodern. Final year project report, Nanyang Technological University. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100054 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/7785 en 41 p. application/pdf
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
Zhang, Jieqiang
Poetry as postmodern
title Poetry as postmodern
title_full Poetry as postmodern
title_fullStr Poetry as postmodern
title_full_unstemmed Poetry as postmodern
title_short Poetry as postmodern
title_sort poetry as postmodern
topic DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100054
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/7785
work_keys_str_mv AT zhangjieqiang poetryaspostmodern