Facing the other: A comparison of the poetry of William Carlos Williams and The Cafe Riche Circle
Abstract
Borrowing an analytical tool from cultural critic Edward Said, this dissertation compares the poetry of William Carlos Williams and the Café Riche Circle (Adunis, Lebanon; Muh[dotbelow]ammad al-Maghrut, Syria; Ah[dotbelow]mad 'abd al-Mut[dotbelow]i H[dotbelow]ijazi and S[dotbelow]alah[dotbelow] 'abd al-S[dotbelow]abur, Egypt; Badr Shakir al-Sayya, Iraq; and Muh[dotbelow]mmad al-Fayturi, Sudan). This thesis discusses the figure of the Other in the works of exiled authors who must live and work in an alien cultural setting. Such alienation became a constant theme in the works of these modernist poets, who, despite the dissimilarities of their backgrounds, produced poetry that was surprisingly similar. Despite the very different historical and cultural situations of New Jersey 1920 and Cairo 1948, the two environments operated to produce poets with similar poetic interests. Exile played a major role in these poets's lives: Williams opted to stay "exiled" in his homeland, refusing to join the American expatriates in Paris, while the Arab poets were literally forced out of their countries and lived mostly in Cairo and Beirut. Williams grappled constantly with the status of being an outsider, at times raging against it and at times accepting the label proudly. The CRC also exhibited a seemingly paradoxical attitude toward their home-cities: anger and disdain mixed with a nostalgic longing for return. In their own ways, both Williams and the CRC created their own concept of the Other, derived from their self-imposed or compulsory exile. I will present a parallel analysis of their works. To Said exile is both an actual and a metaphorical condition. He believes that "even intellectuals who are lifelong members of a society can...be divided into insiders and others." As a refinement of Said's theory, I argue that these categories are equally applicable to the poets I have marked as Others. That is, they can be classified as "Insider Others" or "Outsider Others." While each of the CRC poets falls neatly into one of these categories, Williams straddles both, paralleling his anomalous position in American letters.
Subject Area
Comparative literature,American literature,Middle Eastern literature
Recommended Citation
Lana Emad Younes,
"Facing the other: A comparison of the poetry of William Carlos Williams and The Cafe Riche Circle"
(January 1, 2000).
Dissertations available from ProQuest.
Paper AAI9965597.
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9965597
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