Electronic Theses and Dissertations

JOHN R. HART

Date

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Liberal Studies

Department

Liberal Studies

Committee Chair

Jeremy Killian

Committee Member

Denise Winsor

Committee Member

John Gibson

Abstract

This project challenges the Anti-Cognitivist position that literature may have plenty to say about the world within a text, yet literature cannot contribute to knowledge outside the text. Drawing on the work of Cognitivists and others, I argue that at least one subgenre of literature—memory poetry—can deepen, enrich, and broaden areas or understanding. Indeed, there are cases where understanding may be so lacking as to only allow for us recognize how much we do not know about an experience, such as the experience of a post-traumatic flashback, at a more visceral level than the DSM-V can achieve in a clinical prose definition. A key point of the Anti-Cognitivist position rests on the notion that information contained in a work of literature can be reduced to a summary apart from a literary form, like a poem. I draw on Gestalt psychology, which suggests that our minds process wholes before parts. To use a common example, we see the flock not the individual birds. Some poetry works in this top-down, big-picture poetic process to lend a point of view that might not be accessible in a prose sentence, summary, or definition. I argue that the memory poetry of William Wordsworth, Yousef Komunyakaa, and Li-Young Lee can enhance and enrich our understanding of their respective subjects—Stoic sage-like radical acceptance, the experience of post-traumatic stress as temporal-linguistic displacement, and the experience of other minds via shared language. Certainly, poetry can be aesthetically pleasing, poignant, or potent; however, poetry that concerns itself with the operation of memory can shine a light of understanding on regions of human experience that are otherwise only partially lit.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.”

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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