증언과 시의 언어: 뮤리얼 루카이저의『사자(死者)의 서(書)』읽기 (Testimony and the Language of Poetry: Reading Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 영미문학연구 / 26호 / 67 ~ 97페이지
· 저자명 : 정은귀

초록

Following so many years of neglect, Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead has recently been the subject of critical attention. In order to reassess her poetics which has not been fully appreciated by literary critics, this essay recaptures The Book of the Dead, a series of twenty poems, from the perspective of poetics of testimony. Originally published as a chapter of U.S. 1, Rukeyser’s second book of poems, The Book of the Dead is based on the Hawk’s Nest incident, the worst industrial disaster of America that happened in West Virginia in the early 1930s. Full of testimony with historical materials and documents about the incident, The Book of the Dead failed to garner enough critical attention with somewhat political and unpoetic mood. I argue that Rukeyser’s attempts to weave the incident as an experimental poem in the form of testimony let the dead testify to the tragic incident in their own voices. As the combined form of legal testimony, documentation, conversation, lyric songs, etc, The Book of the Dead successfully marks the forgotten spot of history. By exploring the ways in which Rukeyser maps the American landscape at her own time, I demonstrate how she forges poetic paths that connect disparate historical, social, and literary fields.

영어초록

Following so many years of neglect, Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead has recently been the subject of critical attention. In order to reassess her poetics which has not been fully appreciated by literary critics, this essay recaptures The Book of the Dead, a series of twenty poems, from the perspective of poetics of testimony. Originally published as a chapter of U.S. 1, Rukeyser’s second book of poems, The Book of the Dead is based on the Hawk’s Nest incident, the worst industrial disaster of America that happened in West Virginia in the early 1930s. Full of testimony with historical materials and documents about the incident, The Book of the Dead failed to garner enough critical attention with somewhat political and unpoetic mood. I argue that Rukeyser’s attempts to weave the incident as an experimental poem in the form of testimony let the dead testify to the tragic incident in their own voices. As the combined form of legal testimony, documentation, conversation, lyric songs, etc, The Book of the Dead successfully marks the forgotten spot of history. By exploring the ways in which Rukeyser maps the American landscape at her own time, I demonstrate how she forges poetic paths that connect disparate historical, social, and literary fields.

참고자료

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