Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry

Download or read book Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry written by Jason Lagapa and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the utopian imagination in contemporary American poetry and the ways in which experimental poets formulate a utopian poetics by adopting the rhetorical principles of negative theology, which proposes using negative statements as a means of attesting to the superior, unrepresentable being of God. With individual chapters on works by such poets as Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, and Alice Notley, this book illustrates how a strategy of negation similarly proves optimal for depicting the subject of utopia in literary works. Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry: Determined Negations contends that negative statements in experimental poetry illustrate the potential for utopian social change, not by portraying an ideal world itself but by revealing the very challenge of representing utopia directly.