A Study Of Alienation In Marianne Moore's Poetry From The Perspective Of Foucault's Power Theory

Marianne Moore,Pulitzer Prize winner,pays attention to the alienation of the marginalized group.Domestic and foreign researches mainly concentrate on Moore's artistic feature,feminism,theme and identity.Little attention has been paid to alienation in Moore's poetry.This thesis aims to examine the alienation of women,the colonized and nature in Moore's poetry from Foucault's power theory to delve into the power relationship between the powerful and the powerless.Foucault's power is relation between two individuals,a relationship which is such that one direct the behavior of an other,or determine the behavior of another.Discipline,discourse and knowledge are different forms of power of distinctive groups.Discipline is the specific technique of a power that regard individuals both as objects and as instrument of its exercise,while discourse determines what are the criteria of truth,who is allowed to speak with authority and where such speech can be spoken.Besides,Knowledge and power ale integrated with one another.Through the formation and accumulation of the new knowledge,the effect of power relation is expanded.The thesis consists of introduction,body part and conclusion.The introduction sketches Moore's poetic achievements,literature review of Moore's studies,theoretical framework on Foucault's power theory and thesis statement.The body part covers three chapters.The first chapter dwells on the alienation of women under men's discipline.Women lose equal rights in discourse and writing under feminized discourse and phallogocentrism.Women are alienated as servants in “Silence” and as truncated images in “The mind is an enchanting thing”.Moore argues that restraint and the combination of reality and imagination in writing may eliminate alienation.The second chapter examines the alienation of the colonized under colonial discourse.colonial discourse of the suzerain deprives discourse power of the colonized.The colonized loses discourse power and is alienated as the Other in “Spenser's Island” and in “In distrust of merits”.Moore demonstrates that the allusion to Irish Literary Renaissance and the retrospect to Irish classics may eliminate alienation of the Irish,while group-based consciousness may eliminate alienation of the Jews.The third chapter explores the alienation of nature under consumptive knowledge in “An octopus” and “A jellyfish”.Nature is considered as the object of visual pleasure by human beings.Nature loses its natural rights and is alienated as spectacle and commodity.Moore argues that the wilderness of nature and the call for fraternal love may eliminate alienation of nature.The conclusion points out the alienation of women,the colonized and nature under the exercise of discipline,discourse and knowledge.Moore argues subjective independence of the marginalized may eliminate alienation and expresses her hope for establishing a harmonious society by the discussion of the power relationship of the marginalized group.