Space, Travel, and Home: the Lyrical Subjectivity in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop

• Main Authors: Hsiu-Chen Lin, 林秀珍
• Other Authors: Chen-Chen Tseng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7q43cd

碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 創作與英語文學研究所 === 95 === Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is one of the greatest and most influential American poets in the twentieth century. Although she is not a prolific writer, her works have been widely read among reading public, literary critics and academic circles. Interests in her works do not dwindle after her death. New generations of readers keep emerging and this may account for the publishing of the new collection of her works last year, 2006. Praises have been given to her for her precise and self-oblivious observations, mature skills in versification, her humor and wisdom radiating between the lines, and her employment of detached tone and approach in conveying significant insights. One of the features that characterize Bishop’s works is her ceaseless observation upon the space that surrounds her. This thesis aims to explore her spatial concerns and their relations to the formation of her lyrical subjectivity in her poetry. In this thesis I contend that Bishop’s lyrical subjectivity undergoes transformations along with her spatial rethinking. This thesis is divided into three major chapters. The first chapter provides the overall framework by outlining theories of subjectivity and space the thesis bases upon. Not only theorists argue for space as a key factor in self-formation, Bishop herself also feels the need of taking spatial concerns. The two axes that frame and shape her spatial conceptions are closely connected with her ideas of travel and home. Therefore, I take these two axes as the basic framework of the subsequent chapters with Chapter Two focusing on travel and Chapter Three on home. Through active contemplations on travel and home, Bishop ultimately acquires a flexible dynamics that help shape her conception of space as fluctuation and fluidity. Positioning in such a shifting and flowing space, her lyrical subjectivity can only roam with that force of fluctuation. An alternative subject is thus formed which simultaneously travels and dwells in that watery and dazzling landscape.