Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Lyons, Richard

Committee Member

Pierce, Catherine

Committee Member

Marsh, Kelly

Date of Degree

5-3-2008

Original embargo terms

MSU Only Indefinitely

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Campus Access Only

Major

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of English

Abstract

This volume of original poetry is prefaced by a critical introduction examining the narrative distancing strategies present in Louise Glück’s The Seven Ages. The introduction focuses on the tendency of Glück’s speakers to create distance between themselves and volatile emotions and addresses these distancing techniques in groupings of childhood, adolescent, adult, and domestic poems. In a larger context, the introduction examines how Glück’s speakers ultimately construct their own identities and define autonomous boundaries by both attempting to adhere to prescribed ideals and rejecting conventional depictions of womanhood. The subsequent collection of poetry seeks to define the existing boundaries between self and other in both family and love relationships, to examine the impossibility of returning to or sharing in any truthful way our separate pasts, and to define personal truths in the middle distance between that which we have been taught and that which we have learned.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16285

Comments

Ashes for Rising

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