Harrowed Brine: Lyric Vapors and Spectral Forms

Back to Results

Skip to main content

Full Metadata

Overview

Year:: 2025
Contributor:: Cunniff, M.J. (creator); Smailbegovic, Ada (Advisor); Katz, Tamar (Reader); Burt, Stephanie (Reader); Brown University. Department of English (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Ecopoetics; Lyric poetry; Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889; Poetics; Lowell, Robert, 1917-1977; Heaney, Seamus, 1939-2013
Extent:: viii, 138 p.

Abstract:: This dissertation examines the spectral, thalassic, and atmospheric “elements” of lyric in the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins as well as two contemporary poets, Robert Lowell and Seamus Heaney. Drawing on ecocritically and theologically inflected close readings of several watery and airy incidents of poetic encounter, I argue that the liminal aspects of water, air, and mist/vapor are deployed by each of these poets to exemplify the aesthetic tensions between poetic form and formlessness and, in turn, to create the conditions for interrogating unresolved theological and metaphysical problems.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2025

Cunniff, M.J., "Harrowed Brine: Lyric Vapors and Spectral Forms" (2025). English Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:9mva3bpw/

English Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the English department.
...