Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Program
Liberal Studies
Advisor
Matthew K. Gold
Subject Categories
Literature in English, North America
Keywords
Post-conceptualism, poetry, Beckett, Marquis de Sade
Abstract
These three chapters take as their focus the emergent movement of post-conceptual poetry. The first chapter, “What is Post-conceptual Poetry?,” attempts to delineate the varying definitions of post-conceptualism offered by four critics (Felix Bernstein, Diana Hamilton, Vanessa Place, and Robert Fitterman). Finding none of these to be satisfactory, I turn towards the delineation of my own definition of post-conceptualism in the second chapter, “Beckett contra Sade: Two Kinds of Repetition,” which asserts that post-conceptualism may derive a sort of cohesive political agenda from its rejection of both Sadean and Beckettian repetition. “Between the Cloud and the Page,” the third chapter, argues that we can approach post-conceptualism through the lens of textuality. I assert that the post-conceptual text lives in the expanse between immaterial ideas (what one can call the “cloud”) and the physicality of words on the page. Therefore, the aesthetics of post-conceptualism can be said to be an agglomeration of tactics employed by what I believe to be the ideologically opposed movements of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and conceptual poetics.
Recommended Citation
Kirby, Michael, "Between the Cloud and the Page: Repetition and Textuality in Post-Conceptual Poetics" (2017). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2051