James Dickey and the Gentle Ecstasy of Earth: A Reading of the Poems (Southern Literary Studies) - Softcover

Kirschten, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080712687X ISBN 13: 9780807126875

Publisher: LSU Press, 1999

Synopsis

Robert Kirschten maintains that most formal analyses of Jams Dickey’s poetry have been unsatisfactory or at best only partially complete. Some critics have labeled Dickey an American romantic, while others have called him a mystic, a pantheist, a comic poet.

In James Dickey and the Gentle Ecstasy of Earth, Kirschten provides a fuller understanding of Dickey’s lyric vision by employing what Ronald Crane calls “multiple working hypotheses.” The first three of these―mysticism, neoplatonism, and romanticism―serve primarily to align general traits in Dickey’s poetry with familiar literary traditions. The fourth of Kirschten’s hypotheses―primitivism―is drawn from the field of anthropology. Kirschten shows that such anthropological concepts as magic, rites of passage, and ritual violence are vital in describing Dickey’s central methods.

After synthesizing the four hypotheses to establish a critical base, Kirschten investigates three crucial elements in Dickey’s poetry: his lyric speakers, central narrative devices, and poetic diction. The final chapter, in a culmination of the entire investigation, offers a reading of the long poem “The Shark’s Parlor.”

Kirschten’s study reveals a sure grasp of the philosophical principles of literary criticism as well as a wide range of reading, especially in the literature of romanticism. This lucid examination gives us genuine new insights into the work of one of the country’s premier poets.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Kirschten , a screenwriter, lives in Hollywood, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080712687X
• ISBN 13: 9780807126875
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236