| dc.description | The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) offers in his expansive and diverse writings a theory of language, literature, and life. According to his "dialogism," we inhabit a "heteroglot" world, one based on a plurality of meanings each of which results from a constant interaction between meanings in actual events of communication, meanings inherently ideological in the sense that used language expresses idea systems and world views. Bakhtin's theories, then, are diachronic, for he examines language and literature as discourse, as part of cultural history. Indeed, Bakhtin's dialogism is a theory of selfhood as loophole existence. Al Purdy's poems express a similar dialogic attitude to life. Both a profound and comic poet, Purdy (born 1918) gives voice to loophole being and idea systems at play. Filled with traces of the carnivalesque, moreover, the Purdy poem articulates a polemical philosophy, one based on a struggle between opposite ideas, emotions, and values. For these reasons, Purdy's poetry is amenable to being examined within the framework of Bakhtin's theories. This dissertation, then, examines these poems as discourse, as dialogic events rather than monologic things, and attempts to understand them in the total complexity of author, text, and reader. While the first chapter places Purdy within a socio-historic context, the context of debates on culture, literature, and criticism in Canada and specifically on him, chapter two focuses on the poet's authorial stance, on his attempts to dialogically subvert authorial authority in preference to authenticity. Chapter three examines polyphony and dialogue in this seemingly lyrical poetry as they are embodied in Purdy's use of voice, and chapter four turns to Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope to explain the flux of time and space in the poems, the ontological dialogue the poet carries on with cosmos, earth, country, and home. Finally, the fifth chapter examines the ideological dialogue of this marketplace poet, his participation in the dynamic of culture and society. This dissertation, in summary, engages dialogically a poet concerned ultimately with language as discourse and poetry as being alive. | en_US |
