In this Book
- Invisible Fences: Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature
- Book
- 2000
- Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Monte illuminates these constraints through an examination of works that have influenced the development of the prose poem as well as through a discussion of genre theory and detailed readings of poems ranging from Charles Baudelaire's "La Solitude" to John Ashbery's "The System." Monte explores the ways in which literary-historical narratives affect interpretation: why, for example, prose poetry tends to be seen as a revolutionary genre and how this perspective influences readings of individual works. The American poets he discusses include Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and Ashbery; the French poets range from Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarmé to Max Jacob. In exploring prose poetry as a genre, Invisible Fences offers new perspectives not only on modern poetry, but also on genre itself, challenging current theories of genre with a test case that asks for yet eludes definition.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Note on Terminology
- p. ix
- Introduction
- pp. 1-14
- 3. Poetry in a Prosaic World
- pp. 64-87
- 4. The Makings of a Genre
- pp. 88-116
- 5. The Emergence of Prose Poetry in English
- pp. 117-133
- 8. Negative Dialectics
- pp. 181-226
- Conclusion
- pp. 227-242
- Bibliography
- pp. 281-292