Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1983

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Nathan, Norman

Abstract

Robert Bly believes that every culture was once matriarchal and that everyone in those cultures enjoyed a mode of sentience he calls mother consciousness, in which compassion, ecstasy, a love for nature and an identity with the cosmos were naturally experienced. He suggests that this awareness is resurfacing in contemporary cultures and that the work of some poets illustrates that emergence. Theodore Roethke, I believe, is one of these poets. In "North American Sequence" he strives to return to that kind of awareness, but discovers that the obstacle is the egocentric personality, which continually asserts its psychical dominion out of fear that implicit in an identity with the cosmos is its own annihilation. It is not until the final poem, "The Rose," that the poet attains complete effacement of his ego and he abides in mother consciousness.

Extent

63 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1983.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14157

Format

pdf

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