Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2015, Humanities

The purpose of this research is to identify main causes for the expansion of ekphrastic poetry during the 20th century and how it became a more widely used genre. The goal is to show how ekphrasis contributed to the growth of the interdisciplinary partnership between museums and poets. By evaluating two factors that led to a growing interest in the genre and increased accessibility to poetry and the visual arts. This is done by looking at ekphrastic work by Imagist poets like Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. as well as the growth of 20th century museum accessibility and educational practices. The expansion of ekphrasis resulted in a wider exposure to poetry, the visual arts and museums. Ekphrasis assisted in accomplishing mutual goals of exposing and educating the public to both mediums, which resulted in better understanding of the genre and its influence on museums throughout the 20th century.

Committee: Valerie Stoker Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Dennis Loranger Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Andrew Strombeck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Karla Huebner Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Literature; Museum Studies; Museums

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2010, English

This dissertation examines Amy Lowell's poetry, her use of allusion especially pertaining to her expression of Sapphic Modernism, and her significant contribution to a new, lyric tradition rooted in America. In this study, I define Sapphic Modernism as poetry that is written in a style similar to Sappho's, and which alludes to and refigures the ideas, images, and motifs of Sappho's work and of other poets in modern ways to gain new poetic perspective. By alluding to Sappho's images and motifs, and internalizing Sappho's poetic craft, Lowell empowered her lyric gift and shaped her expression of modernism. Lowell's Sapphic Modernism activates the female body as a landscape of desire where the beloved is both a subject and object and elevates the act of writing about love into an epiphanic experience. As a woman and as a lesbian, she inherited a fragmented tradition that called upon her to reclaim what had not yet been publically spoken. Lesbian eroticism, the depiction of female desire and a gynocentric approach to literary history and form lay at the heart of this act of reclamation. Like Sappho, Lowell challenges and re-writes her poetic predecessors in order to create poetry that is inclusive of her unique experience as a woman and a lesbian. Lowell's modernism celebrated the aesthetics of her own daily life while encouraging inclusivity within the poetic tradition in which she was writing. By close reading of Lowell's poetry, looking at how she engaged her predecessors, and studying how her work influenced the poets who have written after her, this study illuminates the deep impact her work has had on subsequent generations of poets affected by her work. Lowell's Sapphic Modernism created a revisionary call and response between the poetic voices of the past and the poets of the future, creating a foundational vision of an American/world poetry that is constantly challenging and refashioning its borders. If we shake the burning birch tree of Lowell's invention, we (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Judith Oster Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Mary Grimm (Committee Member); Gary Stonum Ph.D. (Committee Member); Martin Helzle Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Classical Studies; Comparative Literature; Gender; Literature; Womens Studies