Dialogue Of Form And Ethics In Marianne Moore’s Poetry

Marianne Moore is an important American modernist poet,and one of the most influential women poets in the history of American poetry.Moore lays emphasis on the function of form,dedicating to the experiment and innovation of poetic forms.Moore is a typical "radical" poet in terms of poetic form,yet her radical form contrasts radically with her "conservative" content.Throughout her career,Moore insists on the ethical dimension of poeltry,but she is not simply a moralist Moore’s poetry shows distinctive features in form at different stage of her career,which present to us as examplar for research into modernist poetic form and innovation,and into the relation between form and content of poetry since 20th century.This thesis takes as the focus Moor’s poetic form and innovation,analyzes the issue based on textual close reading,with Adorno’s aesthetic theory and views on poetic form as guiding theory,accepting the same time other scholars’ theories and views.The thesis first of all discusses in depth Moore’s poetic principle and views on poetic form,which founds the basis for investigation into Moore’s poetic form and formal experiment.With this theoretical basis,the thesis taps into formal features and development of Moore’s poetry chronologically,endeavoring to find out the motives and drives behind them,either socio-historical,ethical,literary or cultural,and the interactive and dialogical relation between forms and ethical implications of Moore’s poetry.Specifically these issues are discussed in the following five chapters.Chapter one probes into the concept of sincerity and Moore’s modernist poetic principle.This chapter intends to prove that modernist sincerity or genuineness,the core of Moore’s poetic conception,differs drastically from transparent and autonomous romantic selfhood and sincerity.Modernist sincerity is a multi-dimensional concept,the poetics based on which implicates that poetry in general is Adorno’s "spontaneous response to objective situation".Chapter two further dwells on Moore’s views of precision and conception of poetic form.Like emotion,sincerity cannot be nailed down directly,thus cannot become artistic standard itself.It must be transformed into a kind of measurable standard,herein,precision."Expediency determines form"roughly generalizes Moore’s view on poetic form,which demonstrates Moore’s aesthetics of precision in terms of form.In appearance,it shows itself in the exact duplication of form,yet on a deeper layer,it is closely linked with poetics of sincerity.Chapter three focuses on syllabic verse,that is,the first stage of Moore’s earlier career.Moore’s formal innovation is selection of form in the context of difficult writing,which responds to pressures of reality,literary market and scientism.Her syllabic verse effects a kind of visual shock with its unique arrangement of lines,which appears as abandonment of tradition,yet it in effect signifies her insistence on form itself and on formal elements like repetition and sounds.This doubleness of both abandonment and insistence illustrates itself contrapotionally in Moore’s female voice and subversion.Chapter four dwells on painting and Moore’s poetic abstraction,or rather the second stage of earlier career.It’s a stage when Moore sojourns in free verse and immerses in modern city life and visual arts,whose influence of the latter is lasting and contributes mainly to the abstraction of her poetry.Moore "observes" reality and artistic creation in the context of modernity using the poetic form of“display and list",or deconstructs female images in the eye of traditional males with the method of "dissect",with effect of gazing-resistance similar to Duchamp ’s Nude Descending Staircase,or formulates feminine ethical ekphrastic poetry with shifting sight.The last chapter investigates into poetry of the third stage,that is,into Moore’s use of quotation and issue of Americanness in her poetry.Moore quotes in combination with technique of collage and montage in painting.Yet the significance of her quotation lies in its difference from Eliot’s quotation,which in turn bespeaks the ethical dimension of her poetry,in her search for national identity of American.Moore returns to syllabic verse in form,becoming an authority of her own,by which she tries to pursue an authority for American in turning to American traits and culture in terms of content.Chronological study of Moore’s poetry reveals her career as a process of continual boundary crossing and territory expanding.Moore’s poetry in the 40s and after,if viewed with this process in mind,will not stand as decline of form or "moral turn",but rather,further crossing and expanding,as"cultural turn" and necessary change of poetic form for that purpose.