| Robert Frost's use of rural imagery and metaphors to express universals inherent in humanity's interaction with forces such as love, death and dying, fate, and the complex interface where mankind and nature meet in opposition, has led a number of critics to label Frost--perhaps too hastily--as being philosophically muddled or a pastoral regionalist. Frost's poetry can perhaps be more effectively analyzed by positing that life can be viewed as a journey, and oral storytelling possesses the power to teach. In this manner, Frost's poetry reveals an understanding on the part of Frost of the existence of modes of reality other than the sensory. To Frost, each individual is a self-contained universe defined by his, or her, sum and range of experience. Frost's use of complex juxtapositions of realities serves as a device to lead the reader through territory that is alien to his, or her, subjective frame of reference.;This thesis uses the reality classifications theorized by Lawrence LeShan in his book Alternate Realities to examine Frost's poetry from a viewpoint that takes into account the fact that every individual possesses a frame of reference predicated on a personal mythology unlike any other. Further examination of Frost's presentation of reality involves his apparent borrowing from and building on the haiku form, and his awareness of the philosophical components of zen that serve as its foundation. Defining complex human interactions and emotions places the limitations of language under a tremendous strain. Zen presents a view of reality that is less centered on verbal recognition of difficult concepts and is more dependent on intuitive or subjective recognition. Thus, it incorporates three of LeShan's reality codifications (the sensory, the clairvoyant, and the mythic). (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
