The Wild That Attracts Us: New Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers

by ShaunAnne Tangney (Editor)

Overview

The first collection in twenty years of essays on Robinson Jeffers, one of the great American poets of the twentieth century, this work signals the sea change in Jeffers scholarship, as well as the increasing breadth and depth of criticism of the literature of the American West. The essays assembled here highlight issues and theories critical to Jeffers studies, among them the advance of ecocriticism, the reimagining of regionalism as place studies, the continuing development of cultural studies and the new historicism, the increasingly poignant vector of science and literature, the new formalism, particularly as it pertains to narrative verse, and the glaring omission of feminist analysis in Jeffers scholarship. Jeffers has always appealed to a wider audience than many twentieth-century poets, and this book will speak to that general readership as well as to scholars and students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826355775
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	06/15/2015
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

ShaunAnne Tangney is a professor of English at Minot State University, where she teaches American literature, critical theory, and creative writing. Her scholarly interests focus on the literature of the American West. She is also a poet, and her work has been published in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: "The wild that attracts us"-in the World and on the Page Shaunanne Tangney xiii

Chapter 1 Robinson Jeffers and the Contemplation of Consciousness Christopher Damien 1

Chapter 2 The Neurasthenic Logic of Robinson Jeffers's Antiurbanism T. Bradford Campbell 25

Chapter 3 Constructed Witness: The Drama of Presence in Jeffers's Lyric Voice Tim Hunt 41

Chapter 4 Jeffers, Pessimism, and Time Robert Zaller 65

Chapter 5 Knocking Our Heads to Pieces against the Night: Going Cosmic with Robinson Jeffers Anthony Lioi 117

Chapter 6 "The mould to break away from": An Ecofeminist Reading of "Roan Stallion" Shaunanne Tangney 141

Chapter 7 Praxis, Gnosis, Poiesis: Inhabitation as Performative Myth in Thoreau and Jeffers Bryon Williams 161

Chapter 8 Jeffers's 1907 Hike in the San Bernardino Mountains: A Closer Look Robert Kafka 193

Chapter 9 The Warm Reception of Robinson Jeffers's Poetry in Cold War Czechoslovakia Petr Kopecký 223

Chapter 10 Robinson Jeffers, Translation, and the Return of Narrative David J. Rothman 255

Contributors 289

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

"For those interested in the fascinating poetry of Robinson Jeffers, this collection of essays provides a rich assortment of intriguing and rewarding new avenues into his work."—David Copland Morris, author of Literature and Environment: The Inhumanist Perspective and the Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

From the Publisher