Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


ouhonors1274991004.pdf (175.86 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Hidden in Plain Sight: John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival

Britz, Andreas
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1274991004

Abstract Details

2010, Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, English.
This paper insists that John Berryman's "Dream Songs" be read as a survival epic. Henry, the poem's protagonist, escapes annihilation by assuming a great number of aliases unknown to his persecutors. This obsessive costuming continues until the seventh and final book, the moment of his emancipation and literary success, when he is no longer able to continue the charade of Mr. Bones and Henry Pussycat. The novelty and majesty of the seventh book is the subject of a careful, probing investigation of Henry's miraculous resurfacing in society. It is at this moment in the poem that John Berryman, like Henry, feels justified in removing the mask and disguise that for so long sheltered him from the obscenities of the world. I argue that the author inserts his own person, quite apart from Henry, into this picturesque conclusion to the poem, first by ridding himself of Henryspeech, and, secondly, by eliminating the figure of the interlocutor.
Mark Halliday (Advisor)
41 p.
American Literature; Comparative Literature; Language; Literature
John Berryman; The Dream Songs; minstrelsy; blackface; interlocutor; Robert Lowell; Delmore Schwartz; Gary Q. Arpin; John Haffenden; Paul Mariani; Mr. Bones; Henry Pussycat; Ireland; language; disguise; hiding; middle generation; confessional; Book VII

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Britz, A. (2010). Hidden in Plain Sight: John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival [Undergraduate thesis, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1274991004

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Britz, Andreas. Hidden in Plain Sight: John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival. 2010. Ohio University, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1274991004.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Britz, Andreas. "Hidden in Plain Sight: John Berryman and the Poetics of Survival." Undergraduate thesis, Ohio University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1274991004

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ouhonors1274991004
2,978
© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University Honors Tutorial College and OhioLINK.