The song of nature, the song of hope: J.H. Prynne's Pearls that Were

Vol.42,No.2(2016)

Wit Pietrzak

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2016-2-4

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/136096

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Abstract
The present article investigates J. H. Prynne's 1999 volume Pearl that Were for the tensions between man's fallibility and the song of nature, which is revealed as poetry's proper domain. Prynne's imagery is traced to various Renaissance, Romantic and contemporary poetic instantiations of the themes of nature and the body as inscribed in language. As a result, the dense allusive texture of Pearls that Were is shown to be underlain with a conflict between the dominance-obsessed but ailing man and an ever more silent voice of poetry, which is here demonstrated to be a composite trope of marginalised figures: from fauna and flora, to the impoverished, all the way to women. Finally, against the destitute background, I argue that the volume offers hope that runs counter to maladies the volume thematises.

Keywords:
J. H. Prynne; poetic voice; Romanticism; contemporary poetry

Pages:
57–68
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