Chapter 16 Robert Frost
Robert Frost was born in California and lived there until his father died, when Frost was eleven. The clarity of Frost’s diction the colloquial rhythms, the simplicity of his images, and above all the folksy speaker—these are intended to make the poems look natural, unplanned. In the context of the modernist movement, however, they can be seen as a thoughtful reply to high modernism’s fondness for obscurity and difficulty. Although Frost’s ruralism affirmed the modernist distaste for cities, he was writing the kind of traditional, accessible poetry that modernists argued could no longer be written. In addition, by investing in the New England terrain, he rejected modernist internationalism and revitalized the tradition of New England regionalism.
Frost achieved an internal dynamic in his poems by playing the rhythms of ordinary speech against formal patterns of line and verse and containing them within traditional forms. The interaction of colloquial diction with blank verse is especially central to his dramatic monologues. To Frost traditional forms were the essence of poetry, material with which poets responded to flux and disorder(what, adopting scientific terminology, he called “decay”) by forging something permanent. Poetry, he wrote, was “one step backward taken”, resisting time—a “momentary stay against confusion”.
Critical Perspectives
1.Thematic Study
Joel Westerdale, in “Fiat homo: Redeeming Frost via Nietzsche”, states that Robert Frost demonstrated that his most famous poem is best read as an exemplar of Nietzschean amor fati. Topics discussed include his poem The Road Not Taken focusing on individualism and the hearty pioneer spirit; poem Orange is the New Black on racism; and his poem depicting American culture.[1]
Peter J. Stanlis, in “Robert Frost and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution”, discusses Robert Frost’s acquired interest in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and analyzes the assumed conflict in doctrines and perspectives between science and religion. What Frost meant by rethinking his belief in God and the claims of the revolutionary theory by Darwin; Frost’s open-mindedness regarding Darwin’s theory; Frost’s dualistic and metaphorical approach to evolution.[2]
2.New Historicism
Roger Mills, in “The President and the Poet”, recalls former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s Robert Frost, where our nation’s leader saluted the arts and pledged to support them. Topics discussed include Kennedy’s speech at the convocation at Amherst College gymnasium; political structure of the U.S. and his motivation, and direction towards the politics.[3]
Robert Stilling, in “Between Friends: Rediscovering the War Thoughts of Robert Frost”, reflects on the poem War Thoughts at Home by Robert Frost exemplifies the stories of two friends in Frost’s life. The first was Edward Thomas, who died during the World War Ⅰ. The second story depicts the friendship of Frost with Frederic G. Melcher, a rising star in the book trade. The poem deals in that moment before darkness, doubting the necessity of the bravery that drives a soldier-poet like Thomas to enlist. Its doubt stands at odds with the poet’s own stoic convictions about war and violence. Meanwhile, issues of fragmentation and disconnection that haunt the last stanza of the poem are addressed.[4]
3.Ethical Study
Jeff Frank, in “Love and Ruin(s): Robert Frost on Moral Repair”, argues that where Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue begins: facing a moral world in ruin. MacIntyre argues that this predicament leaves us with a choice: we can follow the path of Friedrich Nietzsche, accepting this moral destruction and attempting to create lives in a rootless, uncertain world, or the path of Aristotle, working to reclaim a world in which close-knit communities sustain human practices that make it possible for us to flourish. Jeff Frank rejects MacIntyre’s framework and in this essay attempts to create an alternative path, one of moral repair. Through a close reading of several poems from Robert Frost’s North of Boston, Frank develops the notion of moral repair and describes its ethical and educational implications.[5]
4.Comparative Study
Paula Kopacz, in “Claiming Place: Robert Frost and Jesse Stuart”, argues that Robert Frost and Jesse Stuart are both known as regional artists. In fact, Frost’s use of his New England region was pointed out to Stuart as a model by a literary mentor at Vanderbilt shortly after the publication of the Southern Agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My Stand. Indeed, there are many similarities between the two men: both were farmers and nature writers, teachers and educators, and above all, regional writers who captured the flora and fauna and character of their respective regions. Despite their different regions, both men take an honest and authentic look at the unsettling and sometimes cruel ironies of nature and the human condition: the appearance of rustic simplicity that the Yankee and the Appalachian artist tease us into taking at face value nevertheless provokes the Truth of deep probing into the meaning of life. As successful regional artists, Appalachian Stuart and New England Frost claim their place not only in geography, but more importantly, in American literary tradition as each one uses his intimate knowledge of place and character to spin a wonderfully entertaining read, whether it be in prose or verse. Most similar when they are linked by the jarring effect of final lines (Frost) and the ironic disjunction between content and title (Stuart), both writers ultimately, often surprisingly, strike the reader with the hard edge of universal truth about what it means to be human.[6]
John Edgar Tidwell, in “Two Writers Sharing: Sterling A. Brown, Robert Frost, and In Dives’ Dive”, argues that literary influence can be a reciprocating theme of sharing through an analysis of the poets Sterling A. Brown and Robert Frost. John discusses the influence and intertextuality of these two American poets, exploring the significance of the poem In Dives’ Dive, by Frost on the work of Brown. He also examines their overlapping views of literary history and analyzes how both men sought to find their place in society by portraying politics in their works of poetry.[7]
5.Cultural Study
R. Clifton Spargo, in “ Robert Frost and the Allure of Consensus”, discusses the poetry of author Robert Frost and responds to the common idea that his popularity connotes a lack of complexity and seriousness. R. Clifton sees Frost’s work as reflecting awareness of the patterns of everyday speech. Frost’s use of the commonplace, or cliché, is seen as a way of experimenting with the language, examining the motives of the speaker and showing awareness of the historical concepts behind the language. He also sees Frost’s playing with cliché as a manifestation of a democratic culture, which accepts shared history and reinterprets it for the current time. He believes that Frost was fascinated by the dynamic tension between questioning tradition and the need for obedience, community, and acknowledgment of shared circumstances.[8]
Dan Diephouse, in “The Economic Impulse in Robert Frost”, examines the extent to which personal material economic circumstances and the cultural economic ethos for poetry writing affected Robert Frost. It looks into how some of Frost’s poetry was informed by these circumstances. The article also examines how and to what degree the poet sublimated the material issue into an aesthetic. Frost’s best poems, Birches and After Apple-Picking, reflect the different concepts of economics and aesthetics, vocation and avocation, work and life, home economy and natural economy. His poems reflect the way he sees work in human and communal terms.[9]
6.Thematic Study
Sherman J. Clark, in “Frost for Lawyers: The Best Thing That We’re Put Here For’s to See”, discusses the book The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems edited by Edward Connery Lathem, focusing on an analysis of why lawyers should read the literary works created by Frost. Work-life balance and lawyering in America are mentioned, along with Frost’s poems A Passing Glimpse and The Tuft of Flowers. Pragmatism and a reported tension between life and law are examined, as well as issues such as aspiration and self-delusion.[10]
Thomas Duddy, in “The Sadness that Lurks: Robert Frost and the Poetry of Poverty”, on Poetry and Poverty, states that in his address Frost expressed his sympathy towards poor people and admitted that he understands the plight of poor through his own experiences. Thomas informs that throughout his life Frost has experienced financial insecurities and has been involved into variety of jobs like farmer and teacher.[11](https://www.daowen.com)
7.Psychoanalytical Criticism
Lisa Hinrichsen, in “A Defensive Eye: Anxiety, Fear and Form in the Poetry of Robert Frost”, argues that Robert Frost’s poems enact a poetic and psychic process of displacing and managing generalized anxiety through converting it into object-specific fear. Drawing upon the psychoanalytical work of Sigmund Freud, Dominick LaCapra and Eric Santner, this essay analyzes how and why Robert Frost’s poems display a “defensive eye”: a self-protective relationship to the world dependent upon a continual switching of visual and linguistic perspectives that diffuses the pressures interior to the poem and creates a “momentary stay against confusion”. Through close readings of The Vantage Point, The Mending Wall, The Wood-Pile, The Fear, An Old Man’s Winter Night and A Considerable Speck, the essay traces Frost’s visual preoccupation with boundaries, walls, doors, and frames that demarcate spatial limits, and describes how the poem negotiates the psychological and linguistic tension between containment and catharsis.[12]
Keat Murray, in “Robert Frost’s Portrait of a Modern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of Acquainted with the Night”, interprets the poem Acquainted With the Night, by Robert Frost, which focuses on the concept of the persona; observations by psychologists Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell; use of poetic form and language; persona’s conception of the night; symbolism of the persona’s venture in the darkness, water and light; word choice and rhythm.[13]
8.New Criticism
Naser Emdad and Md.Ariful Islam Laskar, in “Design, Darkness and Duality: Defamiliarization in Frost’s Poetry”, argues that Robert Frost, a true representative of American literature, deals with the idyllic pastoral landscape of America and traces the transition of American life and society of his time in a lucid way. He is highly rated and esteemed as a pastoral poet. Though the diction of his poems apparently seems to be simple, many of these poems deal with complex and philosophical themes. Sometimes, the level of complexity is so high that the readers become intrigued and deceived and it instigates the readers’ thoughts to a great extent. Frost intentionally brings odd and weird imageries and symbols or “something sinister” which works as a pattern or design for Frost’s poetry and this process defamiliarizes his poems and presents them as a new wine in an old bottle. In the core of many of Frost’s poems we find that there dwells a macabre, eccentric, and lonely feature of human life wearing the terrifying “design of darkness” in the lap of a gentle, meek, and picturesque nature. In essence, this paper is an effort to find out and show how Frost focuses on the design of darkness and duality, and deeply penetrates nature to acquaint his readers with a deeper meaning of life and its surroundings in a sing-song and pleasant voice by skillfully applying the technique of defamiliarization.[14]
【注释】
[1]Westerdale J. “Fiat homo: Redeeming Frost via Nietzsche”. Massachusetts Review, 2018, 59(2):281-288.
[2]Stanlis P J. “Robert Frost and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution”. Modern Age, 2000, 42(2):145.
[3]Mills R. “The President and the Poet”. Massachusetts Review, 2018, 59(2):271-280.
[4]Stilling R. “Between Friends: Rediscovering the War Thoughts of Robert Frost”. Virginia Quarterly Review, 2006, 82(4):113-119.
[5]Frank J. “Love and Ruin(s): Robert Frost on Moral Repair”. Educational Theory, 2011, 61(5):587-600.
[6]Kopacz P. “Claiming Place: Robert Frost and Jesse Stuart”. Journal of Appalachian Studies, 2011, 17(1/2):177-187.
[7]Tidwell J E.“Two Writers Sharing: Sterling A. Brown, Robert Frost, and In Dives Dive’”. African American Review, 1997, 31(3):399-408.
[8]Spargo R C. “Robert Frost and the Allure of Consensus”. Raritan, 2009, 28(3):38-65.
[9]Diephouse D. “The Economic Impulse in Robert Frost”. Criticism, 2006, 48(4):477-507.
[10]Clark S J. “Frost for Lawyers: The Best Thing That We’re Put Here For’s to See”. Michigan Law Review, 2014, 112(6):867-882.
[11]Duddy T. “The Sadness that Lurks: Robert Frost and the Poetry of Poverty”. Hudson Review, 2011, 64(3):445-461.
[12]Hinrichsen L. “A Defensive Eye: Anxiety, Fear and Form in the Poetry of Robert Frost”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2008, 31(3):44-57.
[13]Murray K. “Robert Frost’s Portrait of a Modern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of Acquainted with the Night”. Midwest Quarterly, 2000, 41(4):370.
[14]Emdad N, Laskar M A I. “Design, Darkness and Duality: Defamiliarization in Frost’s Poetry”. ASA University Review, 2013, 7(1):37-44.