“CERTAIN ROUTES TO UNCERTAIN LANDS”: SOME REMARKS ON THE DIFFICULTY OF MAPPING DAVID GASCOYNE’S ÉCRITURE

Apply

“CERTAIN ROUTES TO UNCERTAIN LANDS”: SOME REMARKS ON THE DIFFICULTY OF MAPPING DAVID GASCOYNE’S ÉCRITURE

Journal Title: ІНОЗЕМНА ФІЛОЛОГІЯ - Year 2016, Vol 129, Issue

Abstract

The paper ventures to investigate the possibilities of mapping David Gascoyne’s écriture and outlines the basic problems which anybody attempting such a task will sooner or later face. I seek to find out what is the actual nature of the allegedly critical shift – in the English poet’s outlook as well as in his literary style – that appears to have taken place sometime between 1936 and 1939, exactly when and how it happened (if happen it did, that is) and what its significance for Gascoyne’s poetic development may have been. The paper addresses also what I believe is an all too common misunderstanding that consists in separating the English poet’s early écriture (which is at times most curiously seen as including his “surrealist phase”) from his later writing – the separation all but invariably accompanied by the belief that it is Gascoyne’s later output which is properly mature and thus worth studying, unlike his earlier, supposedly jejune literary oeuvre – and interrogates the possibility of construing Gascoyne’s poetic journey in terms of anything like a development, expansion or growth.

Authors and Affiliations

Tobiasz Cwynar

Keywords

EP ID EP293732
DOI 10.30970/fpl.2016.129.615
Views 115
Downloads 0