the social life of poetry: pluralism and appalachia, 1937-1946 PDF
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UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff KKeennttuucckkyy UUKKnnoowwlleeddggee University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2004 TTHHEE SSOOCCIIAALL LLIIFFEE OOFF PPOOEETTRRYY:: PPLLUURRAALLIISSMM AANNDD AAPPPPAALLAACCHHIIAA,, 11993377--11994466 Christopher Allen Green University of Kentucky, [email protected] RRiigghhtt cclliicckk ttoo ooppeenn aa ffeeeeddbbaacckk ffoorrmm iinn aa nneeww ttaabb ttoo lleett uuss kknnooww hhooww tthhiiss ddooccuummeenntt bbeenneefifittss yyoouu.. RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Green, Christopher Allen, "THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY: PLURALISM AND APPALACHIA, 1937-1946" (2004). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 349. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/349 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Christopher Allen Green The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2004 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY: PLURALISM AND APPALACHIA, 1937-1946 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Christopher Allen Green Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Dale Bauer, Professor of English Lexington, Kentucky 2004 Copyright © Chris Green 2004 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY: PLURALISM AND APPALACHIA, 1937-1946 This dissertation demonstrates how poetry about Appalachia expanded American considerations of democracy, ethnicity, and cultural values. I argue that poetry is profoundly communal in its construction and investigate how the value of poetry changes based upon its transfer through varying networks of production, circulation, and reception. Informed by theories of cultural capital and rhetoric, the chapters trace three books of poetry from their composition and publication to their reception and influence, noting how central political and social institutions and individuals shaped that process. The dissertation establishes how the poets crafted their writing to sway specific interpretive communities’ attitudes on pluralism. In Hounds on the Mountain (Viking, 1937), James Still sang about the erosion of the quiet earth for the liberal, middleclass readers of The Atlantic. In U. S. 1 (Covici·Friede, 1938), Muriel Rukeyser wrote about the deaths of migrant and African-American miners, the Spanish Civil War, and the threat of fascism for popular-front readers of The New Republic, Poetry, and the New Masses. In Clods of Southern Earth (Boni and Gaer, 1946), Don West catalyzed resistance in an interracial readership of southern (and mountain) sharecroppers and factory workers. In each case, the complex interrelations between history, authors, and readers show their mutually transformative effects on pluralism. Within American pluralism from1900 to 1948, my work reveals the vital relations between established ethnicities—African- American, Jewish, Anglo, American Indian, and Southern—and Appalachia. My account follows the concrete connections of pluralism from Plessy vs. Ferguson’s judicial theory of racial purity, through a cultural pluralism based on national origins during WWI, to the Harlem Renaissance, and ends with an examination of regional pluralism in the 1930s. Appalachia was then often understood as preserving remnants of a premodern America, and the authors about whom I write used it to authenticate the values of community, which they felt to be endangered by the threats of modern dissociation, industrial exploitation, and fascist culture. Through close readings of poems in the three books, I establish Appalachia’s role in the discourse of modern American pluralism—the poetics of region and race. KEYWORDS: American Poetry, Cultural Studies, Reader-response Criticism, Multiculturalism, Appalachian Region Christopher A. Green April 20, 2004 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY: PLURALISM AND APPALACHIA, 1937-1946 By Christopher Allen Green Dale M. Bauer Director of Dissertation Dale M. Bauer Director of Graduate Studies April 20, 2004 RULES FOR USE OF DISSERTATIONS Unpublished dissertations submitted for the Doctor’s degree and deposited in the University of Kentucky Library are as a rule open for inspection, but are to be used only with due regard to the rights of the authors. Bibliographical references may be noted, but quotations or summaries of part may be published only with the permission of the author, and with the usual scholarly acknowledgments. Extensive copying for publication of the dissertation in whole or in part also requires the consent of the Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Kentucky. DISSERTATION Christopher Allen Green The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2004 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY: PLURALISM AND APPALACHIA, 1937-1946 DISSERTATION A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Christopher Allen Green Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Dale Bauer, Professor of English Lexington, Kentucky 2004 Copyright © Chris Green 2004 For Jenny
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