Date of Defense
4-18-1997
Department
Teaching, Learning and Educational Studies
First Advisor
Dr. Gwen raaberg
Second Advisor
Dr. Larry tenHarmsel
Third Advisor
Dr. Stephanie A Gauper
Abstract
Elizabeth Bishop, that enigmatic literary individual, continues to pervade the 20th century imagination. Her poems challenge our often lax perception and resist simple answers to complex questions of epistemology, offering instead a shifting dialectic that modulates according to an alternating distance from and connectivity to the world, a process which resembles, absurdly, bubble-making: the poet eases the filmy materials of her life into a perfect, precarious rainbow bubble which floats briefly on air until it bursts under its own weight (or is it lightness?). Bishop waves many such bubbles in the air, creating an ephemeral rainbow whose bubbles are, ironically, eternally preserved in verse, simultaneously imitating the processes of life while resisting the tendencies of wholeness to scatter into its many parts.
Recommended Citation
Tack, Sonja R., "ENGL 400, The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop: A Complete Course for Teaching College Undergraduates" (1997). Honors Theses. 1297.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/1297
Access Setting
Honors Thesis-Campus Only