Date Thesis Awarded
7-2012
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Literary and Cultural Studies
Advisor
Charles Palermo
Committee Members
Ann Marie Stock
Christopher J. MacGowan
Catherine Levesque
Abstract
In this thesis, I examine how Williams reawakens Bruegel's past for us (the postmodern audience) through his own historicizing spirit and visual intelligence. Through the framework of Jauss' reception aesthetics, I discuss why Bruegel's work resonated with the modernist moment, and with the late poetry of William Carlos Williams in particular. My focus is the "Pictures from Brueghel" sequence, for which Williams was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. In the sequence, Williams attempts to fuse the design of painting and poem, and the result is a new "composite" that gives these old master paintings new light.
Recommended Citation
Barth, Catherine E., "Old Masters and Modern Intrigue: Reception of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Late Poetry of William Carlos Williams" (2012). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 493.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/493
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.