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“...A HIDEOUS MONSTER”: SOCIAL REPRESSION AND REBELLION IN GREGORY CORSO’S “THE AMERICAN WAY”

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abstract
The writing of Gregory Corso (1930-2001) has received little critical attention when compared to that of his contemporaries. This thesis investigates the cause of that discrepancy through Corso’s poem “The American Way”. In reading “The American Way”, we discover Corso’s worldview and goals via a primarily New Historicist methodology. The first section of this thesis, “A Factory of Sludge: The Inhibiting Systems of the American Way”, explores the poem’s depiction of a corrupt national system. The thesis’s second section, “Battle Plans: Imagined and Engineered Weapons Against the American Way” explains Corso’s in-poem proposals to revive the United States. Finally, the third section, “Corso and the Way: How and Why the Poet Disdains 20th Century America”, foregrounds these abstract concepts in evidence from the author’s life and historical context.
subject
20th Century American
Beat
Corso
Gregory Corso
Modern Poetry
Poetry
contributor
LeBey, Kathryn Thurman (author)
Alford, Lucy (committee chair)
Catanzano, Amy (committee member)
date
2022-05-24T08:36:16Z (accessioned)
2022-05-24T08:36:16Z (available)
2022 (issued)
degree
English (discipline)
identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10339/100779 (uri)
language
en (iso)
publisher
Wake Forest University
title
“...A HIDEOUS MONSTER”: SOCIAL REPRESSION AND REBELLION IN GREGORY CORSO’S “THE AMERICAN WAY”
type
Thesis

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