ENGLISH 45C Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tetrameter, Pathetic Fallacy
Document Summary
~2 whitman poems going on at once in cbf. Darker side - every attempt to connect really becomes an attempt for whitman to substitute himself (thru poetry"s pliable rel tw i/you + concrete substitution for whole w/ For both arnold and whitman, world entirely available to the poem. For arnold, the world just sucks - eternal sadness of the sea vs whitman"s manic celebratory impulse. Dickinson/hardy poems problematize the notion that the world is available to the poem/poet. Dickinson: continual investigation of how an indiv exists in/represents the outside world. Poems aren"t representations of exp, but investigations into the exp of exp. Not that she"s actively rewriting whitman, or that hardy"s actively rewriting arnold - just see as inversions of that which is taken for granted in whitman/arnold. Dickinson was like the crypto-great poet of 19c am - increasingly reclusive, eventually never left house. Encountered world thru letters to a small group of ppl.
