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Veronica Forrest-Thomson, poetic artifice and the struggle with forms

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thesis
posted on 2023-06-08, 11:53 authored by Gareth Farmer
This thesis examines the poetry and critical work of Veronica Forrest-Thomson, arguing that her poetic project is characterised by her ‘struggle with forms’. Forrest-Thomson developed many formal models of poetry in her critical writing which acted as ideals to be enacted in practice. The broad struggle in Forrest-Thomson’s poetic project is, then, between the formal projections of theory and a variety of forms of poetic practice; between, that is, the fixed and totalising frames of theory and the local patterns of form and meaning which exceed the logic of an ideal model. This thesis examines the struggle between theoretical and practical forms through consecutive stages in Forrest-Thomson’s career. First, I examine Forrest-Thomson’s attempt to combine Romantic, formalist and modernist poetic theories in an early manifesto. Her early, conflicted theoretical perspectives, I argue, transferred to her poetry as tensions between a use of traditional poetic forms and a variety of free, formal modes. Second, I demonstrate how conflicts between traditional and innovative form in the poems were exacerbated by Forrest-Thomson’s developing interest in artistic theory and concrete poetry. Third, I assess the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy on Forrest-Thomson’s theory and practice, concentrating on her use of his notion of ‘language-games’ to inform collage-like poems and the idea that the poem is a ‘context’ absorbing and transforming others. At this stage, Forrest-Thomson’s theory and poetry also exhibit tensions between modernist and post-modernist perspectives which induce an anxiety of losing control at the level of poetic form for which she compensates with an emphasis on traditional literary figures and forms. Fourth, I examine Forrest-Thomson’s Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry as an example of a particular type of formalism where fixed metaphors of poetic form comprise both the polemical strength and conceptual weakness of her poetic theory. Lastly, I outline the struggle between formal and semantic control and excess in Forrest-Thomson’s late theory and poetry, arguing that her quest for what she calls ‘writing straight’ is impeded by her conflicted assessment of the role and status of complex poetic form.

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  • Published version

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262.0

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  • English Theses

Qualification level

  • doctoral

Qualification name

  • dphil

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

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  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-06-29

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