Showing papers in "Journal of American Studies in 1994"
TL;DR: While American Studies continues to be a popular subject in universities and colleges on both sides of the Atlantic, several influential critics have recently expressed some sense that its methodological direction appears increasingly uncertain this article.
Abstract: While American Studies continues to be a popular subject in universities and colleges on both sides of the Atlantic, several influential critics have recently expressed some sense that its methodological direction appears increasingly uncertain. To be sure, there never was a time when this field's methodology has not been problematic: arguments about what American Studies should include, and indeed whether its eclectic narratives could reasonably be said to constitute an academic discipline at all, have circulated many times since the rapid growth of the subject in the late 1940s. This development has been well documented over the last few years. Philip Gleason has shown how the end of the Second World War led to a patriotic desire to identify certain specifically American values and characteristics; this led to various mythic idealizations of the American spirit in seminal critical works of the 1950s; and this in turn was followed by a more empiricist reaction in the 1960s and 1970s, when social scientists and historians of popular culture were concerned to demystify those earlier, holistic images of a “virgin land” and an “American Adam.” These are old controversies, and I do not intend to rehearse them in detail here. From the perspective of the early 1990s, what is more urgent is to consider how, or indeed if, the field of American Studies might continue to make an important contribution to our understanding of the United States, as well as a significant intervention within the world of learning more generally.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a more rigorous analysis of Morrison's early novels, outlining her willed use of a jazz aesthetic as a pivotal structural device, is presented, and the authors stress the centrality of jazz music stylistically to her whole corpus of work.
Abstract: The publication of Toni Morrison's new novel Jazz with its insistent jazzy themes and rhythms will have concentrated the minds of critics on the relationship of her work to America's most important indigenous artistic form, jazz music. However, in their headlong rush to foreground the impact of jazz on Toni Morrison's latest novel critics should be wary of isolating this novel as her only jazz-influenced work. All of her novels have been informed by the rhythms and cadences of a black musical tradition and in this article I want to stress the centrality of jazz music stylistically to her whole corpus of work. Morrison herself has acknowledged the centrality of a musical aesthetic to her work in interview after interview long before the publication of Jazz : …a novel written a certain way can do precisely what spirituals used to do. It can do exactly what blues or jazz or gossip or stories or myths or folklore did – that stuff which was a common wellspring of ideas… Morrison is writing out of an oral tradition which foregrounds musical performances as well as other oral forms. Some critics have acknowledged the importance of jazz to her work, notably Anthony J. Berret in his article “Toni Morrison's Literary Jazz”. But, despite some provocative and illuminating comments, his is not a systematic account of the use of a jazz mode in Morrison's fiction and I wish in this paper to attempt a more rigorous analysis of her early novels, outlining her willed use of a jazz aesthetic as a pivotal structural device.
25 citations
TL;DR: J. Edgar Hoover as mentioned in this paper directed the Bureau of Investigation (BI) from 1924 until his death in 1972, and his autocratic style of management, self-mythologising habits, reactionary political opinions and accumulation of secret files on real, imagined and potential opponents have been widely documented.
Abstract: J. Edgar Hoover directed the Bureau of Investigation (BI), later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from 1924 until his death in 1972. His autocratic style of management, self-mythologising habits, reactionary political opinions and accumulation of secret files on real, imagined and potential opponents have been widely documented. The views and methods he advocated have been variously attributed to values he absorbed as he grew up and to certain peculiarities of his personality. Most biographers trace his rapid rise to prominence in the BI to his aptitude for investigating alien enemies during World War I, and radicals during the subsequent Red Scare. He was centrally involved in the government's response to the alleged threat of Bolshevism in America, and, although he later denied it, he co-ordinated the notorious Palmer raids of January 1920, in which thousands of aliens were rounded up and several hundred were deported.
15 citations
TL;DR: The last grey wolf in Yellowstone National Park was killed in the 1930s, leaving the entire park system of the lower 48 states cleansed of Canis lupus as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The last grey wolf in Yellowstone National Park was killed in the 1930s, leaving the entire park system of the lower 48 states cleansed of Canis lupus. With the zeal of a Wyatt Earp wiping out a nest of bandits, park rangers pursued the eradication of the wolf during the 1920s and 1930s as vigorously as federal agents hounded them outside the park on behalf of woolgrowing and livestock interests. They succeeded in making the West safe for tourists, deer and sheep. Outside Alaska, the wolf survives only in the northern reaches of Minnesota, Michigan and Montana (where most are Canadian immigrants). Organizations like Defenders of Wildlife, supported by the park service and a majority of park visitors want them reintroduced into Yellowstone. A key scientific consideration is the wolfs role in checking populations of elk, deer and buffalo. Before their mutual demise, wolves took around a third of the annual buffalo increase and contemporary estimates suggest that wolves will reduce the Yellowstone herd by 5 to ao percent. For the average preservationist, however, the wolfs supreme value resides in how it symbolizes a prelapsarian wilderness that was once the entire continent. The wolfs metamorphosis in the Euro-American mind from the most hated and feared of all wild beasts into a valuable and upright member of the natural community is one of the most radical shifts in status undergone by any animal. Yet old ways of thinking die hard among ranchers and in the wolfs residual homeland of Alaska, where state authorities want to reduce numbers to levels likely to benefit prey species like moose and caribou that are prized by sports and subsistence hunters. The howl of protest from the wolfless lower 48 states has been massive but the governor of Alaska, Walter Hickel, retorted at a wolf summit in early 1993: \"You just can't let nature run wild.\
11 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Huxley sums up an abiding fear which runs through American dystopian fiction of the 1950s that individuals will lose their identity and become the two-dimensional stereotypes indicated in two catch-phrases of the period: the "organization man" and the "man in the grey flannel suit".
Abstract: Surveying the American scene in 1958, Aldous Huxley recorded his dismay over the speed with which Brave New World was becoming realized in contemporary developments: “The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.” Having struck a keynote of urgency Huxley then lines up a series of oppositions between limited disorder, individuality and freedom on the one hand, and order, automatism and subjection on the other in order to express his liberal anxieties that political and social organization might hypertrophy. Huxley sums up an abiding fear which runs through American dystopian fiction of the 1950s that individuals will lose their identity and become the two-dimensional stereotypes indicated in two catch-phrases of the period: the “organization man” and the “man in the grey flannel suit. ” William H. Whyte's 1956 study diagnoses the demise of the Protestant ethic in American life and its replacement by a corporate one which privileges “belongingness. ” The result might be, he warns, not a world controlled by self-evident enemies familiar from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but an antiseptic regime presided over by a “mild-looking group of therapists who, like the Grand Inquisitor, would be doing what they did to help you.”
11 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the " southernness" of Byrd's writing is a characteristic less of his subject matter or of his biographical limitations, than of his style, and that the History of the Dividing Line charts enduring preoccupations of his writing career which reached perfectly self-conscious apotheosis in this, his most carefully composed and corrected work.
Abstract: The inception of American regionalism is routinely identified by scholars in either Robert Beverley or William Byrd II, both native Virginians who wrote intensely local works ( The History and Present State of Virginia, 1705 ; The History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728 ) which are amongst the enduring literary products of colonial America. The regional base of both works is immediately apparent in their subjects and setting; but to stop here is to leave critical questions unanswered, questions which have in recent years begun to be addressed by ethnographers and historians such as David Bertelson, Michael Zuckerman and Kenneth Lockridge. In particular, Lockridge's study, meshing biography, history and social psychology, has proposed an illuminating “reconstruction of Byrd's personality” from his writings, an account which stresses Byrd's cultural predicament as a provincial Virginian who strove to be an English gentleman. My purpose in this paper is not to challenge such an interpretation, nor to propose an alternative historical viewpoint, but rather to add the perspective of literary criticism to our reading of Byrd's prose itself. I shall argue that the “ southernness” of Byrd's writing is a characteristic less of his subject matter — his Virginian material — or of his biographical limitations, than of his style, and that the History of the Dividing Line charts enduring preoccupations of Byrd's writing career which reached perfectly self-conscious apotheosis in this, his most carefully composed and corrected work.
7 citations
TL;DR: In the fall of 1828, Irish labourers digging Pennsylvania's Mainline Canal at Clark's Ferry, near Harrisburg, rioted when their employers, the Mammoth Contracting Company of New York, fell behind in wage payments by as much as $8-10,000 damage, but still the workers persisted in their strike.
Abstract: In the fall of 1828, Irish labourers digging Pennsylvania's Mainline Canal at Clark's Ferry, near Harrisburg, rioted when their employers — the Mammoth Contracting Company of New York — fell behind in wage payments by as much as $8–10,000 damage, but still the workers persisted in their strike.
7 citations
TL;DR: As William Tweed noted over a century ago, the cartoon, with its combination of graphic and text, can be a dangerous political weapon as discussed by the authors, noting that it can be used as a powerful political weapon.
Abstract: As William Tweed noted over a century ago, the cartoon, with its combination of graphic and text, can be a dangerous political weapon. Indeed, the Tammany Hall boss's career was destroyed when he was arrested for kidnapping in 1875 — an arrest made by a police officer who recognized Tweed from a newspaper cartoon. Likewise, when comic strips first appeared in the American sensation papers of the 1890s, they too were seen as having important, and potentially threatening, political and social ramifications. Journalists such as Oswald Villard condemned newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst for using the comic strip as a cheap ploy to boost circulation, claiming that it compromised journalistic integrity. Meanwhile, genteel reformers waged their own war against comic strips, worried that the slapstick action and irreverent content would erode middle-class American values and “foster a spirit of disrespect and insubordination… by their glorification of cheeky, iconoclastic urchins.”
7 citations
TL;DR: The early political activities of the New York Intellectuals, during the 1930s and World War II, form part of the canon of twentieth century American intellectual history as discussed by the authors, and a great deal is known about them in the 1950s, especially about the role they played in the “Cultural Cold War” as America's leading anti-Communist intellectuals, helping to launch and run such organizations as the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), and CCF's American affiliate, the American Committee for Cultural freedom (ACCF).
Abstract: The early political activities of the New York Intellectuals, during the 1930s and World War II, form part of the canon of twentieth century American intellectual history. Their involvement in the American Communist movement, their crucial decision to renounce Stalinism, their brief adherence to Trotskyism, and their eventual disillusionment with Communism, are all well documented. Similarly, a great deal is known about them in the 1950s, especially about the role they played in the “Cultural Cold War” as America's leading anti-Communist intellectuals, helping to launch and run such organizations as the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), and CCF's American affiliate, the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF). Comparatively little, however, has been written about them in the period immediately after World War II, the second half of the 1940s. Accounts of their political evolution usually break off some time about 1945 and resume in 1949, only months before the founding of the CCF. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap in our knowledge, first by examining in some detail the history of Europe-America Groups (EAG), a political organization created by a group of New York Intellectuals during the late 1940s, second by analyzing Mary McCarthy's 1949 novel The Oasis, which contains a fictional portrayal of EAG and constitutes a revealing fictional record of the Intellectuals’ political position at this date, and third by tracing the organizational origins of the ACCF and CCF.
6 citations
TL;DR: The formation of the New Deal coalition has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, as have the theories of voting behaviour which have informed that discussion as mentioned in this paper, and this essay seeks to investigate both the history and the theory.
Abstract: The formation of the New Deal coalition has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, as have the theories of voting behaviour which have informed that discussion. This essay seeks to investigate both the history and the theory. First, it analyses the timing and mechanics of the participation of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans in the Roosevelt coalition. Italian-Americans were a key component of the Democratic majority nationwide, and as pre-New Deal Republican bailiwicks that began to turn Democratic in the 1930s, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are ideal settings to study the forging of the Roosevelt coalition not only on the federal but also on the state and local level. Secondly, the essay tests some hypotheses about the New Deal realignment. It suggests that none of the standard hypotheses convincingly explains what was happening in Philadelphia's Italian-American community in the 1930s and 1940s.
5 citations
TL;DR: The Fire in the Flint as discussed by the authors is a story of a Northern-educated black's return to his Southern hometown with the intention of uplifting the black community and improving race relations.
Abstract: On the eve of the publication of his first novel, The Fire in the Flint, Walter White received a letter from T. S. Stribling, whose novel Birthright had inspired White to write Fire in the first place.1 Both novels tell the story of a Northern-educated black's return to his Southern hometown with the intention of uplifting the black community and improving race relations. In his letter, however, Stribling makes it clear that the similarities between the two novels end there.
TL;DR: In the 1990 World Cup, a running tally was kept in most newspapers of fans arrested, deported, and hospitalized, and several articles were devoted to the riots that broke out in England following their semi-final defeat by Germany and to the violent celebrations that occurred in Germany following their World Cup victory.
Abstract: On Sunday June 17, 1990, under the special logo "World Cup" and the bold headline "Brits on Rampage Again," Barry Wilner of the Associated Press described how "police had to use tear gas to disperse a group of about 1,000 English fans" just before the England vs. Netherlands World Cup game.1 The article typifies American writers' fascination with what Wilner called soccer's "unruly rooters" during the 1990 World Cup. The juxtaposition of headlines (World Cup/Brits on Rampage) implies a firm relationship between soccer, violence, and English fans, while the emphasis "Brits on Rampage Again" identifies a context already firmly established in the minds of American readers. American reporters in fact constantly asserted a relationship between soccer and spectator violence. They were often drawn to statistics of violence. A running tally was kept in most newspapers of fans arrested, deported, and hospitalized, and several articles were devoted to the riots that broke out in England following their semi-final defeat by Germany and to the violent celebrations that broke out in Germany following their World Cup victory. The control and self-control of fans at sporting arenas is a vital metaphor for social order in Western cultures. Experiences and descriptions of sport spectating encode the social significances of orderly and disorderly conduct; they express, organize, and make comprehensible a society's disciplinary practices. This is particularly true of the United States, where managed and orderly sport spectacles tacitly confront widespread fears of social anarchy and urban violence, constructing codes of disciplined spectatorship that are all the more powerful for being invisibly maintained. American journalists who observed spectators of World Cup matches found these largely-unarticulated codes transgressed and exposed by fans who participated in the sports event with what seemed baffling unrestraint. Hooliganism forced writers to confront the meanings of American spectator decorums and, usually, to reconfirm their propriety. But there was another side to soccer fans and even to soccer hooligans, for their provocative and often joyous breaching of American spectator codes also called the legitimacy of those codes into question. The example of soccer fans showed by contrast what the American experience of sports lacked in terms of passion and what I shall call
TL;DR: A close look at Gertrude Stein's studies in psychology can shed light on the characterization in '' Melanctha,'' the second story in a collection entitled Three Lives, which Stein originally published in 1909.
Abstract: Since Gertrude Stein's training in psychology contributed significantly to her conception of human behavior, a close look at her studies in this discipline can shed light on the characterization in \" Melanctha,\" the second story in a collection entitled Three Lives, which Stein originally published in 1909. An examination of both the influence of William James, under whom Stein had studied at Harvard, and her own articles, \"Normal Motor Automatism\" and \"Cultivated Motor Automatism; A Study of Character in Its Relation to Attention,\" both of which appeared in the Psychological Review, can clarify Stein's view of Melanctha and Jeff, the two central characters in the story. Stein conceived Melanctha as an hysteric, alternately ruled by one of her two warring personalities, while she portrayed Jeff as a normal, though logic-dominated, human being trying to experience a deeper emotional life by liberating his unconscious.
TL;DR: In the Introduction to his essay-collection, The Black Aesthetic (1971), Addison Gayle, Jr. issued a symptomatic call to arms as mentioned in this paper, pointing out that the 1960s legacy of Black Power had entered literary discourse and the tone, the imagery, had origins in a broad litany of change: from, say, the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock in 1957 to LBJ's signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and from the Selma demonstrations of January-March 1965 to the Poor People's Campaign of
Abstract: So, in the Introduction to his essay-collection, The Black Aesthetic (1971), Addison Gayle, Jr. issued a symptomatic call to arms. The 1960s legacy of Black Power had entered literary discourse. The tone, the imagery, had origins in a broad litany of change: from, say, the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock in 1957 to LBJ's signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and from the Selma demonstrations of January-March 1965 to the Poor People's Campaign of
TL;DR: This paper reviewed recent scholarship on women's role in welfare and, through an analysis of the juvenile court movement, one of the major social welfare reforms of the Progressive Era, identified issues of controversy and debate among historians of women and welfare.
Abstract: Only in recent years, largely as a consequence of developments in women's history, have scholars begun to explore the role of women in the building of the welfare state. By placing gender at the centre of their vision, these historians have questioned established certainties and undercut old paradigms. Analysis of the role of women in welfare has, moreover, influenced the wider history of women, bringing to light new facets of a major organizing concept for historians of women: the interaction between public and private spheres. This paper, therefore, has two linked purposes: to review recent scholarship on women's role in welfare and, through an analysis of the juvenile court movement, one of the major social welfare reforms of the Progressive Era, to identify issues of controversy and debate among historians of women and welfare.
TL;DR: Pound himself seems to have gone to quite unusual lengths to authorise one particular interpretation of the poem as discussed by the authors, such as "Mauberley buries E.P. in the first poem; gets rid of all his troublesome energies".
Abstract: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley occupies an odd place in the context of the poet's work as a whole, partly because it has produced a range of widely conflicting readings, but also because Pound himself seems to have gone to quite unusual lengths to authorise one particular interpretation of the poem. Take his notoriously unhelpful comment in a letter to Thomas Connolly, that "Mauberley buries E. P. in the first poem; gets rid of all his troublesome energies. "x Pound seems to ignore the powerful elements of social critique in the first main section of the poem, insisting instead on the text's complete dissociation of the aesthete Mauberley from the "active" E.P. The same way of construing the poem as simple satire can be found in a 1935 letter to Basil Bunting where Pound observes:
TL;DR: In this article, the Journal of American Studies, 1994, 28 (2), pp. 149-167, is published as a collection of articles from the journal's 1994 issue.
Abstract: This paper was published as: Journal of American Studies, 1994, 28 (2), pp. 149-167. It is available from http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3221480. Doi: 10.1017/S0021875800025433
TL;DR: Foster argues that to gloss over differences to argue, for example, as did nineteenth-century white feminists that the social situations between themselves and black slaves were parallel is grossly to distort reality.
Abstract: had established themselves as poets and essayists, as editors and publishers, but were generally confined to the \"women's pages\" of periodicals. But the similarities must not be allowed to obscure the significant differences. Foster argues that it is equally true that to gloss over differences to argue, for example, as did nineteenth-century white feminists that the social situations between themselves and black slaves were parallel is grossly to distort reality. As Foster points out, many of the facts of an African American woman's life even that of the free-born, middle-class African American woman in the North would strain the limits of a comparison for her white sister. What Foster brings to our attention is African American women writers who tested American literature for its ability to accommodate their own testimonies. These women were as familiar with their African American literary traditions as they were with their African literary traditions. Foster notes that many scholars of African culture have pointed out that in traditional African life virtually nothing is done without poetry and virtually every individual is \"expected to have some competence in certain types of verse.\" Lucy Terry's 1746 poem in commemoration of the lives lost during the skirmish between the Native Americans and the American colonists and Phillis Wheatley's many \"On the death of...\" poems may stem as much from the African praise song, the Lau nyatit or the Noruba rara, for example, as from the European ballad or elegy. Study of the various African literatures and customs, especially the praise songs, the autobiographical writings, and emphasis upon proverbs, masking and naming, may provide very salient explanations for the prevalence of poetry and political commentary by African American women.
TL;DR: Woodiwiss as mentioned in this paper argues that these developments are the result of a kind of involuntary amnesia of the discourse of social modernism, rather than the effects of postmodernist consumerism or the extra-discursive developments of late capitalism as suggested by Jameson, Harvey, et al.
Abstract: society...\" in as much as there is an incredulity toward the \"...modernist metanarrative...\" (p. 145). It is also a society that \". . . has gone hyperreal.\" Most significantly for the central argument of the book these developments are the result of a kind of involuntary amnesia of the discourse of social modernism, rather than the effects of postmodernist consumerism or the extra-discursive developments of late capitalism as suggested by Jameson, Harvey, et al. At the end of the whole process Woodiwiss tries to marry Marxism and postmodernism by arguing both share an \"...anti-representationalism and ontological non-humanism\" (p. 149). This may be the case, but your reviewer was turning pages always in the hope (ultimately not realised) that the role of language and narrative structures might be explored as a mode of historical analysis. However that was not really an item on the agenda of what is a very well written and entertaining blend of critical theory and history. Much more of this kind of analysis is to be welcomed.
TL;DR: In this article, Middleton's book is divided into two parts: the first is a narrative of seventeenth-century settlements, arranged chronologically and by region; the second examines the eighteenth century (with some referencing back to the earlier period), by way of a series of discrete thematic studies.
Abstract: topics and, of necessity, uneven coverage. Middleton does not escape these pitfalls, and the result is ultimately a disappointing book which promises more than it delivers. The book is divided into two parts: the first is a narrative of seventeenthcentury settlements, arranged chronologically and by region; the second examines the eighteenth century (with some referencing back to the earlier period), by way of a series of discrete thematic studies. Although it might be argued that this approach provides both a chronological and thematic framework, overall the effect is somewhat disorientating, as if the author elected to abandon his adopted method at half way in favour of a different structure. This impression is reinforced by the rather pedestrian tenor of the first part, starting with the obligatory \"age of exploration\" and moving predictably through the histories of the various colonies down to the wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Little is added to what we already know and at times his description exhibits a dated and overly simplistic quality. Chapters on early Virginia and Maryland, for example, focus far more on conventional political description (pp. 3~3^> 73~79)> t n a n on the social and economic conditions underpinning settlement which have attracted the cutting edge of scholarship over the last twenty years. Social, economic and cultural issues are discussed in the second part of the volume. The switch to a thematic approach is welcome, but a serious problem emerges with the selection and organization of material: nine chapters, divided into a numerous sub-headings, covering an array of different topics effectively renders sustained analysis impossible. Middleton is relatively more successful where he devotes an entire chapter to a particular theme, for example, chapters 12 and 13 on Afro-American and Indian society, but frequently he is compelled to condense his account to such a degree that he is able to do little more than provide the briefest of summaries (see chapters 8 to 11). It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Middleton might have done better to opt for a single approach (preferably thematic), and to have informed the narrative with a clear organizational and conceptual framework. While sixthformers and first year undergraduates might find a number of chapters helpful in providing a basic introduction to the field, particularly in Part II, they will probably benefit most from consulting the bibliography at the end of the book.
TL;DR: Quarkmain's approach is similar to the critical procedures of the writers he examines, most notably the "pists and giths" approaches of Ezra Pound and their more academic extension in the works of Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: and aesthetic practice. Quartermain also recognises the role played by gender in the formulation of the Postmodernist stance; his treatment of Gertrude Stein and Susan Howe is coterminous with recent investigations of writers like H. D. and Virginia Woolf. Quartermain's methodology owes much to the critical procedures of the writers he examines, most obviously the \"pists and giths' approaches of Ezra Pound and their more academic extension in the works of Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport. He is not however as magisterial as Kenner and I feel that his scholarship is more secure and less whimsical than Davenport's. As he is the first to admit, the fact that this is a collection of essays leads inevitably to a certain amount of repetition and while on the whole this is unobjectionable, I do not see why we have to be reminded twice in the same essay of the compositional chronology of Bottom: On Shakespeare or Catullus. This is of course a minor quibble, but it does serve to remind us of the negative aspects of an approach which often has a very real, if somewhat idiosyncratic, charm. More seriously, Quartermain likes his literature to be difficult and this sets a natural limit to his sympathies. The essay on Reznikoff provides us with a clear example of this; because his writing is on the surface clear and simple, Quartermain is unable to recognise the complexities packed inside it. Paul Auster's more sympathetic essay in Ground Work offers a salutary corrective to Quartermain's reading of Reznikoff, reminding us that his preferences are in part a subjective affair, useful in so far as they widen our sense of the range of what it means to be articulate. I would also add that his capacity to trace the bewildering trajectories of disjunctive writing stems from his prolonged and intelligent submersion in orthodox grammatical practice: a further reminder that the literature he champions may serve as a useful corrective to traditional perspectives but can never function as its replacement. We need all the literature we can get, and Quartermain is to be congratulated for the steady and expert light he throws on his chosen corner of an ever-expanding field.
TL;DR: Lowell was a Modernist at heart, writing in the wake of the polyglot tradition firmly established in the first half of the twentieth century by Joyce's operatic Babels and Pound's symphonic Cantos.
Abstract: A Modernist at heart, writing in the wake of the polyglot tradition firmly established in the first half of the twentieth century by Joyce's operatic Babels and Pound's symphonic Cantos, Robert Lowell was a poet who spoke in many voices, a master of linguistic personae. Switching with baffling ease from the “otherworldly” Puritanic gloom shrouding his recreation of his New England ancestors, to the very worldly evocation of his own personal life, he was a writer with a keen ear for layering various types of discourse within the span of one poem. What is more, as was the case with Joyce or Pound, his mastery of tone and voice enabled him to let his readers overhear what I am tempted to call a “cultural polyphony” sounding in each of his texts, in the fleeting utterance of one single word — or better still, as I hope to demonstrate, in the discreet note of one syllable, one letter.