The dark edge of the clever tongue: the feminizing ethos in Adrienne Rich's poetry

Abstract

In order to construct a new history and tradition for women, Adrienne Rich must destroy the myth and refute the lies of former times and former writers. The deconstruction of male versions of history and the construction of new histories based on the experience of women is a difficult one and raises many questions about Rich's poetry. How does a radical lesbian/feminist bent on nothing less than the total destruction of patriarchal traditions and structures generate an ethos with enough authority, passion and seriousness to convince an unwilling audience? Adrienne Rich has created many selves through her texts and from these texts and selves has emerged a constantly evolving, ever-changing ethos. It is an ethos that creates and authenticates itself by engaging in a internal dialogue regarding language, poetic tradition, linguistics, symbolic poetic landscapes, authority and history. This internal dialogue becomes externalized in Rich's poetry and manifests itself as a feminizing influence. The evolution of the feminizing ethos, the strategies used to bring it into existence and its effect on the styles, structures and inventive worlds of the poet are the central concern of this dissertation.