Everyday Life And Modernity In Elizabeth Bishop's Poetry

This thesis is a discussion on the everyday modernity in Bishop's poems.Indebted with the theory of Lefebvre's critique on consumption and leisure,Siegfried Giedion's critique on mechanization,Benjamin's view on the politics of everyday life,and de Certeau's theory of practices in everyday life,this thesis explores poet's criticism and revolt against the everyday modernity.This thesis is divided into three parts.Chapter One is an elaboration of different aspects of modernization in America and Brazil where Bishop lives and the relationship between modernization and modernity.Chapter Two shows that Bishop writes about the everyday life as a practical critique on everyday modernity.Indebted on Lefebvre's critique on consumption and modern leisure and Siegfried Giedion's critique on mechanization,this analysis focuses on Bishop's criticism on the alienation of the consumption and leisure in everyday life,and the regularity of daily work and the consequential ritualization of everyday life.in this light,people are in a passive state of everyday life and their body and mind are controlled by the instrumental reason of the modernity.Chapter Three further argues that Bishop writes about everyday life as a critical practice and a kind of revolt against everyday modernity.In her poems,everyday life is not only a realm of passivity and subornation,but also a place of resistance and refusal to the rigidity and boundary in everyday modernity.In the light of theories of Lefebvre,de Certeau,and Benjamin,this chapter shows that there are three kinds of practices in Bishop's poetry: the festival in everyday life,articulating shock experience as the politics of everyday life,the victory of tactics of the administered.Since Bishop has been for a longtime,regarded as an apolitical and conservative poet,the reading of critique and revolt against the everyday modernity in Bishop's poem can help readers understand the complexity of Bishop's poetry.What is more,although William Wordsworth in the Preface of lyrical Ballad firstly encourages poets to write about the ordinary and normal things in life,the everyday life is deemed to be romantic and poetic.However this thesis argues that everyday life,instead of being a land of innocence,is a battlefield,in which all kinds of modern relationship interact.In this way,this discussion offers a new perspective of understanding the writing about the everyday life in modern poetry and literature in general.