Lyrical Strategies: The Poetics of the Twentieth-century American Novel
Open Access
Author:
Owens-Murphy, Katie Rose
Graduate Program:
English
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
November 29, 2012
Committee Members:
Kathryn Hume, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor Robert Lawrence Caserio Jr., Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor John L Selzer, Committee Member Kathryn Marie Grossman, Committee Member Robin Schulze, Special Member Brian Mc Hale, Special Member
Keywords:
Lyric narrative novel twentieth-century American
Abstract:
This project takes a comparative approach to genre by examining twentieth-century American novels in relation to the lyric, rather than the narrative, tradition. Narrative theorists have long noted that many modern and contemporary novels paradoxically abandon the defining characteristics of narrative—plot, sequence, external action—for other rhetorical strategies. I argue for a strain of the twentieth-century American novel that is better suited to the reading practices of lyric poetry, in which we read not for story but for structural repetition, rhythm, figurative meaning, dramatic personae, and apostrophe.