On Louise Glück's Subversive Revisions Of Classical Myths

As an integral part of postmodernist poetry in the United States, postconfessional lyric is moving towards new and varied directions and has made remarkable achievements and gained wide acclaim. Louise Elisabeth Gluck (1948—), a dominant figure in American poetry for more than three decades, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and virtually every other major poetry award and the U. S. poet laureate for 2003-2004, represents one of the new directions. Influenced by confessional and postconfessional poets and well acquainted with classical myths since her childhood, Gluck is adept at fusing intimate autobiographical details with mythic stories, and in so doing, she has invented an entirely new poetic form—the book-length poetic sequence. Her most important collections of poetry—Ararat (1990), The Wild Iris (1992), Meadowlands (1996), Vita Nova (1999), The Seven Ages (2001), and Averno (2006) are all book-length poetic sequences. One of the most distinctive features of these sequences is her subversive revisions of those classical myths. Her deft juxtaposition of mythical stories with autobiographical material has successfully infused into her personal poetry an epic scope, achieving a desired balance between intimacy and impersonality, between the personal and the universal, between the serious and the playful. This dissertation, through a close investigation into the myths Gluck draws on in her major works and through an analysis of the functions of the myths in her poetry, attempts to explore the subversive nature of Gluck's revisions of classical myths, the way she revises the myths, and the value of her revisions.This dissertation is composed of three parts: the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The introduction provides brief background information on Gluck's works and achievement, makes an overview of researches ever done into Gluck's poetry, and then points out the purpose of this dissertation, and the approaches to be adopted in this study. As a major voice in contemporary American poetry, Gluck's works have been well received, and widely reviewed and studied by critics and readers as well. The most notable books devoted to the study of Gluck's poetry are Louise Gluck: Change What You See (2001) and The Poetry of Louise Gluck: A Thematic Introduction (2006). The former is a collection of essays on Gluck's poems and the latter an intensive study of the major themes in Gluck's works, mainly in Ararat, Meadowlands, and The Wild Iris. Regretfully, and also understandably, neither book gives much space and coverage to Gluck's latest sequences. Through a comparative and contrastive study of the Gluck's revisions of myths and the archetypal myths, and by putting Gluck's poetry in the context of postconfessional lyric tradition, this dissertation is intended to explore the subversive nature of Gluck's revisions and their value.The body part of this dissertation consists of three chapters, each dealing with Gluck's revisions of classical myths from a different angle. Chapter One, "Revising Classical Myths—a Hallmark in Gluck's Poetry", addresses first the development and formation of Gluck's poetic style in order to show the important role that mythical elements play in her poetry and then shifts the focus to the major myths Gluck draws on in her poetry and points out that Gluck's turn to myths is not merely references or allusions, but they serve different functions and have significant aesthetic value.Chapter Two is devoted to the study of the principal functions that myths serve in Gluck's poetry, the way Gluck subverts the myths, and the nature of her revisions. By studying her poetry itself and by putting it in relation to the works of other postconfessional poets, this chapter sums up three main functions of myths in Gluck's poetry: Firstly, myths serve as a distancing device, a mask of autobiographical content, which contributes to strike a balance between intimacy and detachment, between the personal and the impersonal, between contemporary life and mythical stories, thus avoiding being overtly confessional or narrowly self-centered and, at the same time, making the personal achieve universal significance. Secondly, myths are used as the backdrops and thematic frames of the poetic sequences. The myths in her poetry, which are already familiar to western readers, serve as a common ground for the reader and the poet to have exchanges of dialogues with each other, and a starting point for the poet to begin her exploration. As the major themes of her poetic sequences are often consistent with, or related to, those of the old myths, the myths serve as the framework of her sequences. The myth of the Garden of Eden, the myth of Odyssey, the myth of Aeneas and Dido, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the myth of Persephone have all been used to achieve this purpose. Lastly, the turn to myths and Gluck's postmodern approaches to them have insinuated dramatic and comic elements into her poetry. The playfulness in her revisions of myths add drama and humor to the dark themes—trauma, recovery from divorce, survival and mortality.The subversive nature of Gluck's revisions of the classical myths is shown in the way she rewrites the myths. First, she has subverted the conventional pattern of narration and narrators used in classical myths. Instead of using a male character as the hero who narrates the story from an omnipresent point of view, Gluck endows the once silenced female characters and minor male characters with their own voices and perceptions. In her poetry, those archetypal heroes—Odysseus, Aeneas, Orpheus—have been put in the background, and have lost their glory and grandeur they have in old myths, even the image of the archetypal God has been revised, his existence questioned, whereas the minor characters such as Penelope, Telemachus, Circe, Dido, Eurydice and Persephone have become the principal figures, looking into the world around them with challenging perceptions.Another important aspect of Gluck's subversion of the myths is her reversal of the conventional assumptions in western culture. One of the major assumptions Gluck reverses is the myth of creation. According to the Bible, God created man. But in Gluck's understanding, the reverse is true: Man created god. Another assumption that Gluck attacks is the deep-rooted notion that men are superior to women. According to the myth of the Garden of Eden, Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs to ease his loneliness, and she could not resist the serpent's temptation and ate the Forbidden Fruit, thus causing the Fall of Man. This myth, as Gluck puts it, "shapes, ever afterward, human character and the human vision of human destiny." In Gluck's version of the creation myth, God divided human beings as "the man, the woman and the woman's body." This revision is not only an irony at the conventional standard to judge women by their looks, to regard women as incomplete individuals; it also demonstrates women's strong desire for autonomy, independence and equality. Another insightful view Gluck expresses in her poetry is about the root of women's oppression. In her opinion, not only the patriarchal culture, but women themselves, working together with men, cause their oppression. Besides, Gluck's poetry is full of new ideas and insights on such issues as love, survival and mortality.Based on the study in the first two chapters, Chapter Three concentrates on the study of the significance and the value of Gluck's revisions of myths in relation to postconfessional lyric and to American society. The value of Gluck's revisions of the myths first lies in her breakthrough and contribution to autobiographical lyric. Her deft use of myths in her poetry, combined with her dramatic and comic treatment of the mythic figures and mythic stories, brings freshness and vitality to postconfessional lyric, promising new possibilities of personal lyric. The value of her revisions also lies in her perception and her criticism of the patriarchal culture and American society. Just as what she says in her poem "Memoir" about the functions of her poetry, Gluck writes poetry in order to "nourish," "sustain" and "attack." With a woman artist's sensibility and intelligence, Gluck attacks the male-dominated culture for the oppression of women, but also accuses women themselves of their over-dependence on males and their complicity in their oppression. At the same time, she has shown her great concern about such issues as moral collapse and violence in the world, and has expressed an artist's tragic view about the world's future and her helplessness.From the analysis and study of the myths Gluck has revised in her poetry, the functions of myths, her subversive revisions and their value in the tradition of personal lyric and in its critique of contemporary American society, this dissertation attempts to draw the following conclusions: firstly, Gluck's revisions of classical and biblical myths are innovative and subversive and are a commentary on the meanings of classical literature and contemporary life; Her version of the garden of Eden, of Odyssey, and of Persephone, set in the context of the postmodern world, has fundamentally changed people's conception of the archetypal myths and enables the reader to see the cultural issues from a new perspective. Secondly, through the juxtaposition of classical myths and autobiographical materials, Gluck has produced a large body of poetry that is not only a "song of myself but also "speaks its period"; Gluck's revision of classical myths in her work marks a continuity with, and departure from, the tradition of personal lyric. Her subversive revision of classical myths is of great significance in the development of personal lyric, and her poetry, especially the book-length volumes in the form of a poetic sequence, marks a new direction and new possibility of personal lyric in this postmodern age.