On Indeterminacy In Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems

Charles Olson is a famous postmodern poet in America, and also the leader of Black Mountain School which behaves active in the twentieth century. His Projective Verse Theory occupies an important position in the postmodern literature. Being called "the postmodern epic", The Maximus Poems is honored as a masterpiece together with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Ezra Pound’s Cantos and William Carlos Williams’Paterson.Based on the theory of Ihab Hassan’s viewpoints about postmodernism and Olson’s projective verse, this thesis focuses on the analysis of indeterminacy in The Maximus Poems. Traditional poems often embody determinate themes, images and other elements; while postmodern works are featured with indeterminacy. Exampled as The Maximus Poems, it is a collection of more than300verses, and is published across over ten years in three volumes. The work refers to science, history, mythology, autobiography and so on, plentiful in content but loose in structure; its nature has determined its indeterminacy. The thesis analyzes its indeterminacy from the aspects of theme, narrative mode, identity, image and language. The indeterminacy of narrative mode is displayed by its illogicality and discontinuity in the temporal and spatial narration; that of identity is reflected by the obscurity of both Maximus’and other figures’; that of image is embodied with uncertain symbols of certain objects; that of theme is presented through discussed comprehension according to either a city or a person; that of language is indicated by its type setting and fragmentary expressions.This discursive writing notion of indeterminacy becomes characteristic in the postmodern literature. It offers readers brand-new perspectives and enables the possibility of infinite interpretations. The Maximus Poems, as an earlier postmodern American work, represents the transform of writing notion and devices in the postmodern period. And through the research it also provides great significance to the study of Charles Olson and other postmodern poets.