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Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator
This essay was born of a desire to understand the relationship between poetry and politics in a meaningful and current way. The twentieth century has seen atrocities that have taken place on an unprecedented scale: times of historical and social extremity, states of exile, censorship, military occup...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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School of Languages and Literatures
2016
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| _version_ | 1867613289920331776 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Betty, Michèle Anne |
| author2 | Hambidge, Joan |
| author_browse | Betty, Michèle Anne Hambidge, Joan |
| author_facet | Hambidge, Joan Betty, Michèle Anne |
| author_sort | Betty, Michèle Anne |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This essay was born of a desire to understand the relationship between poetry and politics in a meaningful and current way. The twentieth century has seen atrocities that have taken place on an unprecedented scale: times of historical and social extremity, states of exile, censorship, military occupation, political persecution, torture, warfare, assassination, apartheid and, more recently, forms of violent terrorism. This essay will consider the function of poetry in a world overcome and consumed by violence. The essay will begin with a consideration of the political function of the ideas expressed in Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry (hereinafter A Defence). Shelley's notion of the promise of art and what it de facto delivers, and his ideas on the significance of poems in the context of politics will be examined. The essay will then consider the views of the Russian Formalists on how to establish the "literariness" of a text and the ability of a text to "defamiliarise", as well as the devices that can be used by a poet to achieve literariness and defamiliarisation. It will touch on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and his concepts of folk humour and grotesque realism in a text. Carolyn Forché's idea of poetry as a witness of a lived experience, as enunciated in her text Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, will be discussed. Thereafter, the essay will consider Viljoen and Van der Merwe's notions of liminality in literature, as expounded in their text Beyond the Threshold, and their explanation of how language can act as a transformative vehicle. In order to illustrate these concepts practically, the essay will analyse two South African poetry collections, namely: Nathan Trantraal's Chokers en Survivors and Oswald Mtshali's Sounds of a Cowhide Drum. The analyses will reveal what distinguishes mere resistance poetry and political diatribe from poetry that is lasting and effective. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/19969 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:33:45.686Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | School of Languages and Literatures |
| publisherStr | School of Languages and Literatures |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/19969 Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator Betty, Michèle Anne Hambidge, Joan Creative Writing This essay was born of a desire to understand the relationship between poetry and politics in a meaningful and current way. The twentieth century has seen atrocities that have taken place on an unprecedented scale: times of historical and social extremity, states of exile, censorship, military occupation, political persecution, torture, warfare, assassination, apartheid and, more recently, forms of violent terrorism. This essay will consider the function of poetry in a world overcome and consumed by violence. The essay will begin with a consideration of the political function of the ideas expressed in Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry (hereinafter A Defence). Shelley's notion of the promise of art and what it de facto delivers, and his ideas on the significance of poems in the context of politics will be examined. The essay will then consider the views of the Russian Formalists on how to establish the "literariness" of a text and the ability of a text to "defamiliarise", as well as the devices that can be used by a poet to achieve literariness and defamiliarisation. It will touch on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and his concepts of folk humour and grotesque realism in a text. Carolyn Forché's idea of poetry as a witness of a lived experience, as enunciated in her text Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, will be discussed. Thereafter, the essay will consider Viljoen and Van der Merwe's notions of liminality in literature, as expounded in their text Beyond the Threshold, and their explanation of how language can act as a transformative vehicle. In order to illustrate these concepts practically, the essay will analyse two South African poetry collections, namely: Nathan Trantraal's Chokers en Survivors and Oswald Mtshali's Sounds of a Cowhide Drum. The analyses will reveal what distinguishes mere resistance poetry and political diatribe from poetry that is lasting and effective. 2016-06-09T11:18:53Z 2016-06-09T11:18:53Z 2015 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19969 eng application/pdf School of Languages and Literatures Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Creative Writing Betty, Michèle Anne Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| title_full | Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| title_fullStr | Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| title_full_unstemmed | Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| title_short | Metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| title_sort | metaphysical balm and the poet as legislator |
| topic | Creative Writing |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19969 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bettymicheleanne metaphysicalbalmandthepoetaslegislator |