Date of Award

1980

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Supervisor

J. Sigman

Language

English

Abstract

A study of the prose and poetry of Charles Olson as an 'act of living and writing' informed by a personal experience of estrangement. Olson's attempt to resolve this experience is shown in an ambiguous view of the meaning of literary creation, one which is complemented by irresolutions in his inherited literary tradition. Olson's work is a polemical response to what can be seen as a poetry and criticism of despair; his 'New Humanism' involves him in a radical denial of 'ontological' literature, and as such poses problems for the explication of his own texts. Olson's poetic theory is not a rigld set of instructions, but the articulation of a 'stance' which (in examining a number of poems) can be seen as practised in a variety of different ways.

Comments

[missing pages 13 and 130]

McMaster University Library