Reproductive anxiety in contemporary American environmental poetry.
Item
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Title
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Reproductive anxiety in contemporary American environmental poetry.
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Identifier
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AAI9707103
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identifier
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9707103
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Creator
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Hegarty, Emily Ann.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Charles Molesworth
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | American Studies
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Abstract
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The contemporary environmental crisis has given rise to a literature of environmental reproductive anxiety in which traditional literary tropes conflating sexual and textual reproduction become troubled by real concerns about the future of human beings as readers and as a species in a toxic world. Traditional and essential concepts of gender and sexuality become particularly problematic to the extent they are based in a concept of an immutable natural world, a concept threatened by environmental degradation. Also problematic in contemporary American environmental poetry of reproductive anxiety is the use made of Native American imagery and texts.;Mary Oliver is considered in terms of her essentialized notion of the Artist and ecofeminism. Oliver's insistent animal Madonna imagery of anthropomorphized and spiritualized figures of fecund animal mothers is a displacement of human reproductive concerns. This Madonna imagery serves to redeem both death and environmental harm, but falls short as a solution to the genocides of the Holocaust and of Native Americans.;Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan explicitly links the crises of environmental damage and the genocide of Native Americans. Her poems combine the holistic viewpoints typical of environmental philosophy and Native American spirituality, leading to a nuanced vision of maternality based in a prioritization of historical and genetic continuance. Her use of ritual language presents a challenge to postmodern readers.;Gary Snyder's environmental poems place the burden of history and civilization on the figures of his sons, who become responsible for continuing not just their family but all of human culture. Through archetypal and literalized metaphors of paternity, Snyder mythologizes biological and literary fertility. His poetic use of Native American materials has been controversial.;A. R. Ammons's classic use of sexual reproductive imagery to represent literary creativity is troubled by reproductive anxiety and by corollary anxiety about the future of poetry. Canonization is equated with survival; many of Ammons's poems construct evolutionary natural canons in which criticism functions as natural selection.;Environmental reproductive anxiety shares with anti-pornography rhetoric a concern with the practical effects of texts. Both discourses are troubled by conflicts surrounding reproduction, sexuality, gender, and the future of human culture.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
