Language,Poetry And Innovation:A Study Of Marjorie Perloff’s

Marjorie Perloff is a contemporary and modernist critic. She analyzes Avant-garde poetry through formalistic and cultural approaches. With Avant-garde poetry as major object, this thesis points out two merits in Perloff’s studies by closing reading and comparative reading:(1) the new values discovered in Avant-garde poetry;(2) language game and language in use embodied in Avant-garde poetry. The interrelation of rhythm and meaning makes rhythm an important means of conveying the idea of poets. Avant-garde, especially language poems, highlights the materiality of language and emphasizes the visual forms of poems. At the same time, rearrangement and recreation of classical works and ready-made productions become another feature of Avant-garde poetry, literary montage. Perloff thinks that language game and language in use provide Avant-garde with new ideas, and context, ordinary language, defamiliarization and anti-traditional syntax make Avant-garde poems afresh. This thesis reaches the conclusion based on summarizing the innovation in Perloff’s poetic criticism: language lays the core position in appreciating poems. Both ordinary language and defamiliarized language pursue innovation in poetic language. Avant-garde poets are anti-traditional and they recreate new works by rearranging classical works and ready-made products to increase the charm of poems. Thus the poems not only resonate with readers but also explode before the readers’ faces.