Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:14:58.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

American Literature in English Translation: Denise Levertov and Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Paul Giles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The theory of exile as a form of intellectual empowerment strongly influenced writers of the Romantic and modernist periods, when major figures from Byron to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett sought to take advantage of a dissociation from native customs to embrace the authenticity of their art. More recently, however, displacement from indigenous cultures has become such a commonplace that it appears difficult to credit the process of migration with any special qualities of critical insight. Nevertheless, literary scholarship remains to some degree in the shadow of the idealization of “exiles and émigrés” that ran through the twentieth century. Edward Said, a Palestinian in the United States, consistently linked his “politics of knowledge” with a principled alienation from “corporations of possession, appropriation, and power,” while looking back to the exiled German scholar of comparative literature Erich Auerbach as a model for transcending “the restraints of imperial or national or provincial limits” (Culture 335). Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian in France, associated a similar perspective of estrangement with Christian narratives of exile and purification, along with their negative correlatives, psychological traumas of disinheritance and depression; but she also attributed to the foreign writer a levitating condition of “weightlessness”: “since he belongs to nothing the foreigner can feel as appertaining to everything, to the entire tradition” (32).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 119 , Issue 1: Special Topic: Literatures at Large , January 2004 , pp. 31 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aijaz, Ahmad. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso, 1992.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. “Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times.” Collected Poems. Ed. Mendelson, Edward. London: Faber, 1976. 259–63.Google Scholar
Bellamy, Joe David, ed. American Poetry Observed: Poets on Their Work. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1984.Google Scholar
Thomas, Bender. “Historians, the Nation, and the Plenitude of Narratives.” Introduction. Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Ed. Bender. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. 1–21.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Breslin, James E. B. From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945–1965. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.Google Scholar
James, Clifford. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee. “Literature for the Planet.” PMLA 116 (2001): 173–88.Google Scholar
Terry, Eagleton. Exiles and Émigrés: Studies in Modern Literature. London: Chatto, 1970.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I: “Nature,” Addresses, and Lectures. Ed. Spiller, Robert E. and Ferguson, Alfred R. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971. 1–45.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II: Essays: First Series. Ed. Joseph Slater, Alfred R. Ferguson, and Jean Ferguson Carr. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. 25–51.Google Scholar
Albert, Gelpi. “Centering the Double Image.” Introduction. Gelpi, Denise Levertov 1– 8.Google Scholar
Albert, Gelpi. Denise Levertov: Selected Criticism. Ed. Gelpi. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993.Google Scholar
Paul, Gilroy. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Peter, Godman. The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.Google Scholar
John, Guillory. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.Google Scholar
Fredric, Jameson. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65–88.Google Scholar
Amy, Kaplan. “Manifest Domesticity.” American Literature 70 (1998): 581–606.Google Scholar
Jamaica, Kincaid. Annie John. New York: Farrar, 1985.Google Scholar
Julia, Kristeva. Strangers to Ourselves. 1989. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Neil, Lazarus. Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Alienation in Silicon Valley.” Levertov, This Great Unknowing 56.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Christmas 1944.” Levertov, Collected Earlier Poems 24–25.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. Collected Earlier Poems 1940–1960. New York: New Directions, 1979.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Durgan.” Levertov, Collected Earlier Poems 21.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Great Possessions.” Levertov, Poet 89–106.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus.” Levertov, Poems 1972–1982. 266–73.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Olga Poems.” Levertov, Poems 1968–1972 111–18.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Origins of a Poem.” Levertov, Poet 43–56.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. Poems 1960–1967. New York: New Directions, 1983.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. Poems 1968–1972. New York: New Directions, 1987.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. Poems 1972–1982. New York: New Directions, 2001.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. The Poet in the World. New York: New Directions, 1973.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “The Sense of Pilgrimage.” Levertov, Poet 62–86.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Some Notes on Organic Form.” Levertov, Poet 7–13.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Stepping Westward.” Levertov, Poems 1960–1967 165–66.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. Tesserae: Memories and Suppositions. 1995. Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1997.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. 1999. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2001.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “To William Carlos Williams.” 21 Sept. 1960. Letter 63 of The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams. Ed. MacGowan, Christopher. New York: New Directions, 1998. 99–102.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Winter Afternoons in the V. & A., Pre-W.W.II.” Levertov, Poems 1972–1982 220–21.Google Scholar
Denise, Levertov. “Zest.” Levertov, Collected Earlier Poems 40.Google Scholar
MacGowan, Christopher. Introduction. The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams. Ed. MacGowan. New York: New Directions, 1998. i–xiv.Google Scholar
William, Packard. “Interview with Denise Levertov.” 1971. Wagner 1–21.Google Scholar
Bill, Readings. The University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Kenneth, Rexroth. “The Poetry of Denise Levertov.” Gelpi, Denise Levertov 11–14.Google Scholar
Bruce, Robbins. Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture. London: Verso, 1993.Google Scholar
Edward, Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.Google Scholar
Edward, Said. “The Politics of Knowledge.” Raritan 11. 1 (1991): 17–31.Google Scholar
Spengemann, William C. A Mirror for Americanists: Reflections on the Idea of American Literature. Hanover: UP of New England, 1989.Google Scholar
Walter, Sutton. “Conversation with Denise Levertov.” Wagner 22–40.Google Scholar
Wagner, Linda Welshimer, ed. Denise Levertov: In Her Own Province. New York: New Directions, 1979.Google Scholar