A Thematic Study Of Rita Dove’s Poetry

This dissertation, based on careful text reading, explores Rita Dove’s Poems, and sums up her unique poetics and writing strategies. Through unraveling and grouping Dove’s poems produced in her over-30-year literary career, this dissertation finds that her rich poems are in fact centered on three distinguished themes, and thus form three poem groups, i.e., coming of age poem group, space poem group, and history poem group. Coming of age poem group, based on autobiographical materials, explores the way black women grow up in terms of body, spirit and arts. Space poem group, starting from different space forms and space images, explores how home space, travelling space, chronotope and poetic space shape and influence black people, and in particular black women intellectuals’ racial identity, cultural identity and artistic identity. History poem group, based on the double layers of black family and black nation, through the threads of the most important historical periods, historical figures and historical events in the historical process from slavery to freedom, explores black family history, slavery history, black emancipation history and black cosmopolitan history.Dove’s coming of age poem group, space poem group, and history poem group, though different in terms of concentrations, have a few internal relationships. The three poem groups represent Dove’s reflections on self identity, racial identity and cultural identity respectively. In this sense, the three poem groups not only have integrated relations, but also represent the dynamic features of identity construction. First of all, from the perspective of self identity construction, coming of age poem group focuses on black people, especially black women’s body, spirit and art growing up, explaining who1am and who we are. Space poem group is centered on the physical, spiritual and artistic special dimensions of black individual and black community, answering the question of where I am from and we are from. History poem group keeps an eye on time dimension of black family and black nation’s developments, depicting a growing up orbit of "I" and "We" in the historical upheavals. Secondly, from the perspective of poetics construction, the three poem groups respond to the unique African American female poetics, special poetics and historical poetics respectively in the post Black Arts Movement era. And the three different poetics work together to construct Dove’s multi-dimensional, multi-layered poetic strategies. Thirdly, from the perspective of racial construction, the three poem groups construct respectively American black subjectivity, black nation’s identity of diaspora and cosmopolitan. So the three poem groups fully represent the feature of Dove’s thematic harmony, which in turn endows a sense of organic integrity to Dove’s poems. Viewing from this point, Dove’s inclusive poems created in different era and different situations are in fact one exclusive poem.This dissertation is composed of five parts. Introduction part makes a brief introduction to Rita Dove’s creative experience and her literary role in African American Literature and American Literature. A short biography is also offered to Rita Dove to show how her literary and aesthetic genealogy is shaped. In addition, A literature review is made to show the historical development and the status quo of Rita Dove study in both abroad and in China, based on which the major task, plan, methods and significance of this dissertation are presented.Chapter I "From Youth to Mother Love:Dove’s Coming of Age Poems" makes an exploration to Dove’s coming of age poem group, her idea about women growing up and her writing strategies. Her coming of age poems found their ways to her six poem collections from Yellow House in the Corner in1980to American Smooth in2004. This poem group with numerous quantity depicts black people, especially black women’s growing up experience from girls to wives to mothers. What’s more, Dove’s growing up poem group is not a lineal depiction of black women’s grow-up, but a wholesome interpretation of contemporary black women’s identity consciousness from three layers, i.e., body growing up of black women, spiritual maturity of black women intellectuals, and the artistic development of black women artists. So black women’s growing up in Dove’s poems is physical, spiritual, and literarily metaphorical as well. What those coming of age poems focusing on mother-daughter relations and father-daughter relations explains in some sense is how Dove, as a black woman poet, negotiate both Western literary tradition and African American literary tradition.Chapter Ⅱ "From Home to World:Dove’s Space Theme" depicts not only the changing vein of Dove’s space themes, but also her changing approaches to black female self construction, and her dynamic space poetics. Dove’s space theme poems, based on different space forms, are divided into four different poem groups, i.e., home space poem group, travelling space poem groups, museum poem group and space poetics poem group, which from different facets reflects Dove’s home concept, world concept, time and space concept and poetics concept. Dove’s home space poem group with rich space images, endows different parts of home with different cultural meanings. The ordinary home space like kitchen, porch and backyard are all closely bound up with black people, especially black women’s fates, and are historically related to black family’s fates. Dove’s travelling space poem group is inseparably interconnected with home space poem group. The black women who are eager to leave home finally follow their hearts on the journey, which initiates Dove’s travelogue poems. Most of museum poem group are collected in Dove’s poem collection Museum. This poem collection reflects, from macro level and micro level, the cultural quality of museum as a space embodying both time and space. Thanks to the idea of museum as a cultural metaphor, Dove changes this chronotope into a textual space, a narrative space and a cultural space. Space poetics poem group reflects the space poetics of Rita Dove as a poem critic. Dove develops Dickson’s space poetic imagination of "house of poetry", in combination with Bachelard’s space poetics, puts forward two essential space poetics concepts:"ghost town" and "a traveling x-marks-the-spot". These two concepts establish Dove’s space poetics concept and an observing point. With rich and multi-layered space themes and space images, Dove creates a living space not only for black women, but also for black poets, achieving two things at one stroke.Chapter Ⅲ "From family history to World History:Dove’s History theme" explores Dove’s history theme, her unique historical concept and her historical poetic construction strategy. Dove’s history theme poems, based on different historical phases, are divided into four poem groups, i.e., black family poem group, black slavery poem group, black emancipation poem group and black cosmopolitan history poem group. From different facets, these four poem groups reflect respectively Dove’s distinguished idea of black community identity, black cultural identity, black political identity and black historical identity. Dove’s black family poem group draws its material from Dove’s grandparents’ migration experience in the first half of the20th century, constructing three layers of dialogues with multi narrative voices:dialogue between husband and wife, dialogue between two generations, and dialogue between Black family history and American history. The trio-layered dialogues not only depict chronologically a middle class black family’s shaping and developing, but against significant historical events, interpret a closely interrelated connection between individual and society, individual and history, individual and community. Dove’s black slavery poem group examines the slavery history which changes black nation’s fate in a violent way. Black slavery history could hardly find its way to American official history, and therefore becomes one of the historical phases deformed seriously by American official history, which leaves enough space for Dove’s poetic imagination. Multi narrative voices are employed again in this part. Black slaves’ confessional voices are expressed with "I","I+I", and "We" to write a black slavery history with life, attitude and story. Dove’s black emancipation poem group centers on one woman, one moment and one event:Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, refused to give her seat on a bus in Alabama to a white passenger, which ignited the flame of Civil Rights Movement. The group of poems centering on Rosa Parks and this black political movement which influenced black people in a far-reaching way, explore again the underside of history, digging out those historical facts about which little is known, such as Rosa’s motive of refusing to give seat, Rosa’s inconspicuous position in this movement, and the men and women behind Rosa, etc. Dove’s concept of black cosmopolitan history is best illustrated in her new poem collection Sonata Mulattica, Which draws its material from George Bridgetower, a biracial18th-century violin virtuoso. This book explores the origin of cosmopolitan experience and cosmopolitan cultural identity of black people.The Conclusion part makes a summary of the ideas discussed in the previous parts, and comes to a clear conclusion. Dove’s three poem groups are integrated, harmonious and unified. And what unifies Dove’s poems is her unique hybrid cultural strategy and dialogic narrative strategy.