Contents
Acknowledgements
vií
Introduction
i
CHAPTER I
American Poetic Canons and the Case ofJohn Berryman
11
i.i 'Mainstream' vs 'Avant-garde': Re-reading the Canon
i.i 'We want anti-models': John Berryman and T.S. Eliot
1.3 Berryman Criticism and die Case for Reassessment
n
22
34
CHAPTER 2.
Cultural Contexts: Religious Life and die Spiritual Politics
of Cold War American Poetry
2.1 Schizophrenic America? The Cold War and the
'Religious Revival'
2.2 Atomic Bombs, Anticommunism, and the Politicisation
ofReligion
2.3 "The tranquillized Fifties': Spiritual Politics in Robert Lowell
2.4 'Heaven under the El': Spiritual Politics in Allen Ginsberg
41
41
48
52
66
CHAPTER 3
The Spiritual Politics of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
3.1 Re-Thinking John Berryman: Spiritual Politics in die
Early Poetry
3.2 Religiopolitical Projects: The Importance of'The Black Book'
3.3 'Dark air fills': 'History' and Religious Rebellion in
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
3.4 'One Saturday's rescue': Homage to Mistress Bradstreet's
Politics of Seduction
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77
77
83
94
105
CHAPTER 4
Anti/Theodicy: The Dream Songs and die Book ofJob
117
4.1 'A Bloody fortune !' Berryman's Spiritual Politics after
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
4.2 'Now, now, p o o r Bones': J o b in The Dream Songs
4.3 The Dream Songs as Theodicy?
117
123
133
4.4 The Dream Songs as Antithcodicy
139
CHAPTER 5
Towards a Religiopolitical Reading of The Dream Songs
5.1 Introductory: Dream Song 23 and Berryman's
Political Polemics
5.2 'Death is a German expert': World War II in
The Dream Songs
5.3 'The faceless monsters of the Soviet Unions': The Cold War
m The Dream Songs
5.4 'Grand Jewish ruler*: Freud in The Dream Songs
5.$ 'How can messiah come ?' Minstrelsy and Blackface in
The Dream Songs
145
145
148
154
16$
177
Conclusion: New Directions
191
Notes
199
Bibliography
231
Index
249