Epic proportions : post-epic verse-novels and postcolonial critique

Burkitt, KH

Abstract

My thesis is based on the premise that verse-novels occupy a marginalised and
contested position in contemporary literature: as they tread the generic boundaries of
poetry and prose writing, they are always marked by their incongruous nature. This
makes for uncomfortable reading as expectations are disrupted and undermined, and, for
the poet, the adoption of the verse-novel form becomes both a risky and consciously
political move. Each of the verse-novels that I consider is self-conscious of its
anomalous generic affiliations and utilises them in order to replicate the postcolonial
politics of the text. These texts all engage with the verse-novel form in different ways
and draw attention to its problematic and marginal nature. This is used to highlight their
postcolonial nature, as they are all concerned with matters of racial and national identity
in a world where these categories are complicated.
The commonality in these works is their relationships with epic form, in this
thesis I identify this as a post-epic mode of writing. My study is based on the relationship
between poetic form and postcolonial critique; it focuses upon three texts: the Australian
poet Les Murray's Fredy Neptune, the Canadian poet Anne Carson's Autobiography of
Red, and British writer Bernardine Evaristo's The Emperor's Babe. These texts and their
authors call for a reconsideration of postcolonialism; this is both demonstrative of a
conceptual shift towards global notions of identity, whilst also being problematic in
terms of the political commitment of the texts. Each of these works demonstrates an
awareness of the contradictory nature of their positions as they shy away from Utopian
visions. In line with this, my aim is to demonstrate the way in which the self-reflexive
employment of experimental poetry compliments an engagement with the transformative
aspect of contemporary postcolonial politics.

Citation

Burkitt, K. Epic proportions : post-epic verse-novels and postcolonial critique. (Thesis). Salford : University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2012
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2007