Robert Frost's Political Body

UK Auflage
ISBN: 978-1-57113-583-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 346 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 658 g

Reihe: Studies in American Literature and Culture

A provocative new study that identifies a deep structure -- that of the political body -- in Frost's poetry.

In Robert Frost's poetry lives the figure of an authoritative public body: a physical, human body that personifies classical liberalism. A deep structure, it manifests itself in his images, the characterization of his speakers, their tones of voice, and -- most crucially -- in his sense of poetry's appropriate scope. To glimpse this political body, Grzegorz Kosc interrogates the poet's views on a number of subjects never explored by Frost criticism: Maya monumental art; Shelley's bodies of sensibility and martyrdom; the bodies of US presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; the association of radical liberalism with bodily deformation; the ulteriority of physical behavior; the popularity of statuettes that supplanted traditional, monumental sculptures of political leaders. For Frost, all these yielded important clues to the writing of a good poem, which had to have the features of a well-shaped, self-disciplined, and stoic body. The final chapter explores the images of Frost's own body used for the frontispieces of the reprint editions of his poetry, images that are the symbols of Frost's aesthetics. Hence the book's title, which not only points to the central structure of Frost's poetry but also suggests that the poet envisioned his own portrait as illustrating the body of political power underlying his aesthetics.

Grzegorz Kosc is Assistant Professor at the University of Lodz and the University of Warsaw, Poland. He is former President of the Robert Frost Society.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kosc, Grzegorz

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Einzelne Autoren: Monographien & Biographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturkritik: Hermeneutik und Interpretation

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
Frost's Experiences and the Intellectual Traditions that Influenced Him
The Undoing of the Maya and Frost's Chafed Boulders
From Shelley's Revolutionary Body to Corporeal Power in Keats
Frost's Poetic Form and the Vicissitudes of the Executive Body
Frost's Browneian Critique of Randolph Bourne and the Monstrosity of Left Liberalism
The Inscrutability of the Body as a Principle of Frost's Irony
From Absolutist Colossi to Republican Figurines
The Symbol of the Political Body: Frost's Portraits in North of Boston and Mountain Interval
Conclusion
Archival Sources
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Grzegorz Kosc is Associate Professor at the University of Lodz and Warsaw, Poland. He is President of the Robert Frost Society.