Mastery's end
Subtitle: travel and postwar American poetry
By: Jeffrey Gray.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
Subjects: American poetry -- Foreign influences; American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Americans -- Foreign countries -- History -- 20th century; Travelers in literature; Travel in literature; Foreign countries -- In literature
Description: "Focusing on lyric poetry, Mastery's End looks at important, yet neglected, issues of subjectivity in post-World War II travel literature. Jeffrey Gray departs from related studies in two regards: nearly all recent scholarly books on the literature of travel have dealt with pre-twentieth-century periods, and all are concerned with narrative genres. Further, Gray questions whether the postcolonial theoretical model of travel as mastery, hegemony, and exploitation still applies. In its place he suggests a model of vulnerability, incoherence, and disorientation to reflect the modern destabilizing nature of travel, a condition that began with the unprecedented movement of people during and after World War II and has not abated since."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-280) and index.
Table of contents: title: Roots and routes : the trouble with travel; title: Falling off the round, turning world : Elizabeth Bishop's Tristes tropiques; title: Interlude : travelers and tourists : from Bishop to Lowell; title: Fear of flying : Robert Lowell and the Trope of vulnerability; title: Interlude : dandies and flaneurs : American poetry and the center-margin debate; title: The great escape : John Ashbery's Travel Agency; title: Shooting the Gulf : three beat questions of travel; title: The problem of witness : the travels of Derek Walcott; title: Travel and difference : Lyn Hejinian and Nathaniel Mackey; title: Epilogue : the trouble with travel.