Abstract

Jericho Brown's The Tradition (2019), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, includes four duplexes, a poetic form of Brown's own invention that combines the sonnet and the blues. Made of fourteen lines separated into seven couplets, the duplex is a complex structure comprised of sets of indents and repeated lines. Brown's use of disparate source forms to create a new form altogether challenges the supremacy of a singular, white American literary tradition, putting it into conversation with other traditions in order to critique its historically racist and heterosexist boundaries. As he does so, Brown works not to abolish "the tradition" or canon, but to expand it beyond reductive ideas of who and what is allowed into this historically exclusive space. The complexity of Brown's formal project mirrors the nuanced and critical hope the duplex form expresses and evokes in readers; in contrast to queer theory's long focus on negativity, Brown's duplexes align themselves with the work of José Muñoz and Mari Ruti, who assert that hope is equally as important as negativity, as they hold the positive and negative together in both form and content. The duplex seeks to expand emotional experience as well as the canon, ultimately attempting to change the way readers feel and act.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; English

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2022-06-13

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd12822

Keywords

Jericho Brown, Black poetry, queer poetry, sonnets, blues, queer negativity, critical hope

Language

english

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