The world lost and found: Romanticism and the Eden myth in Randall Jarrell

This dissertation considers Randall Jarrell in terms of Romanticism and the Eden myth. By examining the Romantic cultural, literary, and historical context of Jarrell's work, this study aims to establish that, in large part because of the Romantic elements of his poetry and fiction, elements that are inextricably related to the Eden myth, Jarrell is a different and better poet than his current reputation as a good war poet would have it.;The Introduction defines “Romanticism” in contrast to Classicism and establishes the context in which Jarrell will be discussed, focusing primarily on imagination, childhood, and the Eden myth.;Chapter 2 examines Jarrell's war poetry, focusing on the intensely personal and often empathetic nature of many poems and various speakers' voices, and concluding that the war poems, against previous critical opinion, contain Romantic elements.;Chapter 3 examines Jarrell's female personas as well as the poetry about women in terms of the fall and redemption aspects of the Eden myth. Jarrell's use of the female perspective in many of his poems recalls the type of identification Romantics often feel with their subjects; it also represents the Romantic inclination to give a voice to those who are too often ignored by society.;Chapter 4 considers the Edenic aspects of Jarrell's children's books and suggests that Jarrell's turning to children's fiction in the later years of his life, when he was also writing his most autobiographical poetry, indicates his increasing turn toward the Romantic. When examined in Romantic context, the shift from “adult” poetry to children's fiction is not as radical or discontinuous as it may seem.;Chapter 5 discusses The Lost World, where Jarrell's Romantic imaginative vision reaches fruition in his autobiographical “The Lost World” and “Thinking of the Lost World.” It is in these last, best poems that Jarrell's relation to Romanticism and to the Eden myth is most abundantly clear.