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Abstract
This dissertation examines a terrain of liminality evident in the works of American poet, Lyn Hejinian, whose writing utilizes imagery (ranging from the verbally visual to the explicitly graphic) and a form of Steinian materiality, in the development of a poetic which moves away from the domain of textual representation towards a new form of realism which challenges existing notions of ideology and perception.
Drawing upon W.J.T. Mitchell’s theories of visuality and Gaston Bachelard’s theorization of the oneiric qualities of writing, as well as on Freudian dream theory, this thesis maps out how the cross disciplinary dimensions of Hejinian’s poetry, render into being a speaking female subject.
Chapter one provides a contextual framework for Hejinian’s writing, articulating the integral role notions of community and collaboration play in the development of a form of writing situated within a space of in-between. It examines the significant influence of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetics on Hejinian as a key participant of the Language poetry group, while moving at the same time away from a focus on the specifics of her relation to the group, towards an analysis of her broader writing oeuvre as conversant with a phenomenology of dreams and as a development of a multimodal textuality, distinct from the linguistically centered focus of Language poetry.
Chapters two and three present a case for the significance of the visual and the material throughout Hejinian’s writing career, as key textual elements in the composition of a language of experience. This experience-focused language, through thematic concern and philosophical inquiry comprises an active representation of female knowledge and desire, which as Hejinian argues throughout her essay “La Faustienne”, has, not by inadvertence but by definition (Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry: 249), been excluded from the narratives of Western history.
Chapters five and six illustrate the multimodal female rhetoric developed in preceding chapters as being a language modeled upon a phenomenology of dreaming. Having been the subject of limited critical attention, Hejinian’s published and unpublished literature on dreams, comprises the central focus of the final two chapters of this dissertation in the development of the chapters’ central claim that, through the composition of a multimodal language, framed and executed through the avenue of experience, Hejinian’s writing project seeks to locate the voice of La Faustienne.