A Thematic Study On Paul Muldoon’s Early Poetry

As a famous modern Irish poet,Paul Muldoon was considered as one of the most accomplished poets since the World War Two,and he played a great role in the English literature.Even though Ireland was under the control of the Great Britain and the Irish language(the Gaelic)was taken over by English totally.There are a lot of famous Irish writers and their works are more or less different from the works of the Great Britain.This thesis mainly studies his four early poetry :New Weather in 1973,Mules in1977,Why Brownlee Left in 1980,and Quoof in 1983.And these four poetry were considered as Muldoon’s Irish poetry that related to and reflected his early growing experience and thoughts.This thesis believes that Muldoon is one of the poets who grown up with the Northern Ireland turmoil or “the Troubles”,his poetry volumes reflected the themes of the violence,deformity and alienation.And they related with the contemporary background.And the hidden political thought also was reflected.There are five chapters in this thesis.The first chapter introduces Paul Muldoon,his volumes and the study on him abroad and in China.The second chapter introduces the important background of these four volumes.The third chapter analyses how violence and deformity reflected in Muldoon’s early poetry.And the theme of violence mostly reflected in Quoof,the theme of deformity mostly reflected in Mules.The fourth chapter further analyses the theme of alienation,which reflected in his four poetry expressed by deformity,exile,emigration and absurdity.The last chapter summaries the main point of this thesis and the findings and points out the research difficulties.And this thesis focuses on the thematic study on his four early poetry,tries to study these three themes systematically and dig out the deep meaning including the political,religious and cultural meaning.