Images of “Social Upheaval” : William Carlos Williams’ Documentary Style|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The aftermath of the Depression in the 1930s brings about an enormous change in Williams’ prose and poetry. Heavily influenced by photography, Williams desires to visualize the atmosphere of “social upheaval” in his works. His commitment to Objectivism is also based on straight photography. In the Depression, Williams produced lots of short stories and poetry on the working-class and proletarian people, feeling empathy for them. In portraying them, he realizes the inadequacy of Objectivism due to its strict form, lack of emotion and impersonality. In this period, the poet attempts to combine his emotional and subjective “I” with his Objectivist vision so that he can create distinctly American poetry.
Evans’s “documentary style” photography inspires Williams to construct a new poetics getting out of sheer Objectivism. In his laudatory review “Sermon With a Camera,” Williams penetrates the unique power of Evans’s photographs distinguished from his contemporary photographers. Significantly, Evans’s photographs are based on “contact” and “locality,” acting as the poet’s primary poetic principles. Moreover, the lyrical elements of his photographs are visually embodied as the “vulgarity of beauty” or “Beautiful Thing” in Williams’ poetry. The non-Objectivist vision of Williams’ short stories and poetry from the 1930s is well suited to Evans’s “documentary style” photography. The working-class and proletarian people standing against the extreme harsh realities of misery appear as the “Beautiful Thing” in Williams’ works. For Williams, the “Beautiful Thing” is quite the same as the “eloquent” and “fluent” images in poetry, which become the essence of “documentary style” poetics. Ultimately, Williams’ poetry including his epic Paterson since the 1930s should be understood as an extension of “documentary style” poetics.

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목차 (Table of Contents)

Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. Documentary of the 1930s
Ⅲ. Evans and Lyrical Documentary Images
Ⅳ. Conclusion
Works Cited

Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. Documentary of the 1930s
Ⅲ. Evans and Lyrical Documentary Images
Ⅳ. Conclusion
Works Cited
Abstract

참고문헌 (Reference)

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2 Beck, John, "Writing the Radical Center : William Carlos Williams, John Dewey, and American Cultural Politics" State U of New York P 2001

3 Schmidt, Peter, "William Carlos Williams, the Arts, and Literary Tradition" Louisiana State UP 1988

4 Doyle, Charles, "William Carlos Williams and the American Poem" Macmillan 1982

5 Gish, Robert F, "William Carlos Williams : A Study of the Short Fiction" G. K. Hall 1989

6 Mariani, Paul, "William Carlos Williams : A New World Naked" McGraw 1981

7 Webster, Mirriam, "Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary" Merriam 1956

8 Benjamin, Walter, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, In The Photography Reader" Routledge 42-58, 2002

9 Williams, William Carlos, "The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams" New Directions 1996

10 Williams, William Carlos, "The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams" New Directions 1986