Beyond the technologized body: Changes in the body imagery in the poetry of Denise Levertov and Margaret Atwood since 1960.

Abstract

This study offers a new reading of the body imagery used by Denise Levertov and Margaret Atwood over the last thirty years. Their poetry offers a vivid and sensitive record of the powerful emotional issues that characterize these tumultuous decades. During this period, these two poets specifically rebel against what they perceive as a concept of women's bodies imposed upon them by an expanding and standardizing technology. Changes in their body imagery are examined along with relevant commentary from the writings of such thinkers as Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Peter Russell, and Fritjof Capra. The study is divided into three stages. The first reviews the various assumptions about gender that have impacted our modern attitudes. The Industrial Revolution that led to our contemporary Age of Technology has radically altered the role of women, but these influences were not always beneficial to men or women. Basically throughout history men have been seen as producers, and women as reproducers. The first stage of this study refers metaphorically to the body as "technologized," which implies a body that has been shaped and defined by the technological needs of its industrialized surroundings. Aspects of this shaping of women's bodies continued well into the 1960s when Levertov and Atwood began their rebellion. The second stage of this study examines the reactions of Levertov and Atwood to this technologized body theme in the late 1960s and 1970s. Their search was for the so-called "natural body" that they believed underlay the technologized one. Levertov retreated into a feminine sacred realm of moon imagery, while Atwood chose to transform the image of woman from victim to victor by arming women's bodies poetically with metaphorical technological weaponry. In the third stage of the process, Atwood and Levertov attack the delimiting notion of the body as it has been technologized thus far. Both poets now move beyond the theme of the individual body, and they advocate an awareness of the interdependence of all life. They argue against the either/or contrast of the natural to the technological. The method throughout this study has been to place the poetry in a central position, allowing it to dictate the conclusions. The writings of other authors have been used to throw light upon the significance of the poets' changes in body imagery within the cultural environment of the United States and Canada.

Date of Award

1-1-1996

Document Type

Dissertation

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