“Whispers Out of Time”: Memorializing (Self-) Portraits in the Work of 
John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin

Author

Andrew D. King, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

5-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

George Fragopoulos

Subject Categories

American Literature | American Studies | Modern Literature | Photography

Keywords

American Studies, Contemporary American Poetry, Photography, Elegy, Postmodernism

Abstract

This thesis documents four distinct post-WWII North American writers and artists—the poet John Berryman, the poet John Ashbery, the classicist and writer Anne Carson, and the photographer Nan Goldin—who expanded traditional definitions and practices of portraiture. Their works—The Dream Songs, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” Nox, and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (and “The Cookie Portfolio”)—developed new ways of representing human subjectivity and the self that integrated the influences of Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, but were not defined by these movements. In an era when notions of autonomous art and human identity became fractured, they picked up the pieces and rearranged them to make portraits (within-self-portraits) that put personhood and mortality at the center of their art.

In addition to close readings and comparisons of the poems, texts, and photographs, this thesis will situate the above and related works in their literary- and art-historical contexts. It will also reference relevant theoretical frameworks applied to these works and genres by critics and scholars.

Recommended Citation

King, Andrew D., "“Whispers Out of Time”: Memorializing (Self-) Portraits in the Work of 
John Berryman, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Nan Goldin" (2019). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3185