Bodies in search of self: Body and identity in the poetic works of Audre Lorde, Anna Swirszczynska and Marina Tsvetaeva.

This dissertation examines the relationship between body and identity in the poetic works of African-Caribbean-American author Audre Lorde (1934--1992), Polish poet Anna Swirszczynska (1909--1984), and Russian author Marina Tsvetaeva (1892--1941). Undeniably prominent authors in their respective cultures, Anna Swirszczynska, Marina Tsvetaeva and Audre Lorde are also well-known for their sometimes shocking use of the body in their poetry and prose. This dissertation claims that the confluence of historical and personal trauma, modernity and postmodernity and the strain of racist, sexist and heterosexist marginalization spurred these authors toward the body as a site where they could explore their views of identity and, simultaneously, taught them that the body is an integral part of the self. Though stylistically very different, these authors all create a poetics of identity that embraces the fragmentation, fluctuation, multiplicity and embodied nature of the self. Each author mirrors her poetics of identity in her stylistics. In Chapter I 'Audre Lorde: Coming out Blackened and Whole,' I explore Lorde's poetics of the fluid, multiple, yet coherent self. In Chapter II 'Anna Swirszczynska: Born Under a Dark Star,' I demonstrate how Swirszczynska differs on the notion of coherency, while still proposing a fluctuating, plural self. Finally, Chapter III 'Marina Tsvetaeva: Transitory Foam of the Sea' suggests that Tsvetaeva completely deconstructs all components of the self. Thus, her poetry implies that identity is illusory. In order to explain these authors' particular views of identity and the body, the introduction draws from such theoretical traditions as feminist post-structuralism, queer theory, postmodernism, postcolonialism and psychoanalysis. These theories run as an undercurrent to the close readings provided in the chapters. The conclusion reiterates the historically traumatic circumstances that impelled these authors toward the body. All three authors indicate that unitary, totalizing ideology results in physical violence and brutality. They offer their poetics of embodied, multiple and fluctuating identity as an opposing force, one that offers freedom and the possibility of eternal growth.Ph.D.American literatureComparative literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsSlavic literatureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123234/2/3068922.pd