| Summary: | <p>This thesis considers several aspects of style across Bishop’s entire oeuvre: cliché, simile, allusion, and self-correction (which is known in rhetoric as <em>correctio</em>). It argues that the range and depth of effects which Bishop creates through these aspects of style has not been properly accounted for; in doing so, the conceptual flexibility of the term ‘style’ is itself explored and substantiated. Following the poetics and critical approach outlined in Bishop’s writings, this thesis critiques and steers a middle course between the formalist and historicist modes dominant in contemporary literary criticism. It avoids the biographical focus that predominates in much criticism of Bishop and, by writing about her posthumously published works alongside those published in her lifetime, also reconciles divergent approaches which either focus disproportionately on archival material, or sideline anything Bishop herself did not publish.</p>
<p>These critical concerns and priorities are outlined in the introduction. The features of style focused on in subsequent chapters—<em>correctio</em>, cliché, simile, and allusion—have been chosen in part because they are used extensively, powerfully and originally by Bishop. Choices about how and in what way to use these features of style also link to broader concerns in 20th-century literature. Bishop’s uses of <em>correctio</em>, for instance, touch on the nature of ekphrasis and attempts to render consciousness in writing; while her use of clichés relates to debates about the demotic in poetry. Bishop’s similes update metaphysical techniques and complicate the importance placed on the visual in 20th-century poetics, while her allusions showcase a poet acutely attuned to the resources of literary reference, and wary of the professional critics seeking to unearth those references. In paying close attention to her style and form, this thesis also attempts to show that Bishop’s, and other poets’, ideas cannot be separated from their stylistic choices.</p>
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