This study focuses on theatricality and melancholia in John Berryman's The Dream Songs, and proposes to view them as inherent in the American cultural experience. It discusses Berryman's work in the context of a larger debate on the significance of loss in the process of subject formation and its relation to language.
This study focuses on theatricality and melancholia in John Berryman's The Dream Songs, and proposes to view them as inherent in the American cultural experience. It discusses Berryman's work in the context of a larger debate on the significance of loss in the process of subject formation and its relation to language, with a commentary on the presences and absences found in the Polish translations of the poem. Revealing the mechanisms of staging the Self after loss, the Songs provide insight into the theatrical and dialogue-driven, context-dependent, intertextual and continuously rewritten character of the American subject.
main themes: the relationship of loss and language, melancholia, theatricality and subject formation in John Berryman's The Dream Songs
Anna Warso is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests concern 20th-century American poetry, literary correspondence, and translation.
