Dear Stephen
I agree with some of your qualifiers.
However - what seems not to be recognised in this conversation is the
importance and struggle of delineating an I, especially for women,
however problematic it is, and that it is, indeed, part of the politics
of identity Doug was mentioning as a desirable topic of conversation. I
think Tracy mentioned some time ago how the critical undermining of the
self in recent times occurred more or less simultaneously with the rise
of feminism. Like her, I think it is not entirely coincidental.
I note, also, that even nasty beasties like Seamus Heaney haven't, in my
time hanging around here, received such a pasting as the women Chris
mentioned. Irrespective of what I think of the poets - and a few of them
I don't know at all - I wonder about that.
>I do not think that it makes
>much difference, really, if a writer believes that there is a transparency
>in language, it is after all a common held belief, and one that is thousands
>of years old. Whether transparency makes you more marketable is another
>factor. Many readers like the "true life stories" indeed that is a genre in
>itself.
I'm not so sure here. I think poets have always had a pretty good grasp
of the slippages of language, and that language is not transparent, and
the "naturalism" to which I was referring is, rather, relatively recent.
Mimesis, at least as I understood Aristotle, is hardly straightforward,
and is in his theories inflected through notions of performance, mimicry
rather than imitation.
Best
Alison
Home Page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
Masthead online: http://www.geocities.com/soho/studios/5662
Alison Croggon
PO Box 186
Newport VIC 3015
Australia
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