Help - looking for ideas on a thesis paper on city poetry.

Hello everyone,

I'm a little stuck planning a longer thesis paper and thought maybe some of you might care to help.

My topic is the representation of the city in two certain Modernist texts, which I'm not going to mention for some reasons. It doesn't really matter what texts they are though.
I have already collected a long list of secondary material which I'm going to use, which includes texts about the city itself (from sociological, philosophical and cultural point of views), especially in contrast to the country, texts about the city in modernist literature, texts about city literature in general and texts about the city in the texts I'm going to discuss.

What I'm stuck with is planning the main part of my paper. One part of it will of course be the close analysis of the texts, but I don't know what I'm going to write about before that, or what I'm going to base my analysis on.

One approach could be looking at, first, how the city is defined, or what aspects of the city actually make a city a city, second, how the city is perceived in Modernist times. The analysis would have two main points then: Looking at how the structures/aspects that a define the city are actually transfered to literary techniques in the text (structure? style? certain perspectives? etc), and looking at the perception of the city within the poem in general.
Problem with that approach is that I don't know if that structure (cityish aspects about the city - perception of the city - how are cityish aspects presented in style/structure/language of the poem - how is the city perceived in the poem) is straight-forward/logical enough. Plus, I dunno what I could write about the perception of the city in Modernist times, because I could basically only base that on secondary material, as I don't have enough time/knowledge to really give examples of other texts etc. However I'd still like to analyse the perception of the city in the text.

Do any of you have any ideas? It would be greatly appreciated! I'll give thumps up to everyone who contributes, if that is any motivation. :biggrin:

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 1

aroy45

2

This was a while ago - but atm I'm researching city poetry for a dissertation and have found Edwin Morgan and Norman Maccaig particularly good. They both write poems about Scottish cities and also NYC

This was posted from The Student Room's iP

Reply 2

evantej

18

Original post by sherling

Hello everyone,

I'm a little stuck planning a longer thesis paper and thought maybe some of you might care to help.

My topic is the representation of the city in two certain Modernist texts, which I'm not going to mention for some reasons. It doesn't really matter what texts they are though.
I have already collected a long list of secondary material which I'm going to use, which includes texts about the city itself (from sociological, philosophical and cultural point of views), especially in contrast to the country, texts about the city in modernist literature, texts about city literature in general and texts about the city in the texts I'm going to discuss.

What I'm stuck with is planning the main part of my paper. One part of it will of course be the close analysis of the texts, but I don't know what I'm going to write about before that, or what I'm going to base my analysis on.

One approach could be looking at, first, how the city is defined, or what aspects of the city actually make a city a city, second, how the city is perceived in Modernist times. The analysis would have two main points then: Looking at how the structures/aspects that a define the city are actually transfered to literary techniques in the text (structure? style? certain perspectives? etc), and looking at the perception of the city within the poem in general.
Problem with that approach is that I don't know if that structure (cityish aspects about the city - perception of the city - how are cityish aspects presented in style/structure/language of the poem - how is the city perceived in the poem) is straight-forward/logical enough. Plus, I dunno what I could write about the perception of the city in Modernist times, because I could basically only base that on secondary material, as I don't have enough time/knowledge to really give examples of other texts etc. However I'd still like to analyse the perception of the city in the text.

Do any of you have any ideas? It would be greatly appreciated! I'll give thumps up to everyone who contributes, if that is any motivation. :biggrin:

Without knowing which authors and texts you are going to write about, I cannot help you. However, you might get some ideas from Hana Wirth-Nesher's City Codes: reading the modern urban novel (1998).

Reply 3

simplicitysim

Original post by sherling

Hello everyone,

I'm a little stuck planning a longer thesis paper and thought maybe some of you might care to help.

My topic is the representation of the city in two certain Modernist texts, which I'm not going to mention for some reasons. It doesn't really matter what texts they are though.
I have already collected a long list of secondary material which I'm going to use, which includes texts about the city itself (from sociological, philosophical and cultural point of views), especially in contrast to the country, texts about the city in modernist literature, texts about city literature in general and texts about the city in the texts I'm going to discuss.

What I'm stuck with is planning the main part of my paper. One part of it will of course be the close analysis of the texts, but I don't know what I'm going to write about before that, or what I'm going to base my analysis on.

One approach could be looking at, first, how the city is defined, or what aspects of the city actually make a city a city, second, how the city is perceived in Modernist times. The analysis would have two main points then: Looking at how the structures/aspects that a define the city are actually transfered to literary techniques in the text (structure? style? certain perspectives? etc), and looking at the perception of the city within the poem in general.
Problem with that approach is that I don't know if that structure (cityish aspects about the city - perception of the city - how are cityish aspects presented in style/structure/language of the poem - how is the city perceived in the poem) is straight-forward/logical enough. Plus, I dunno what I could write about the perception of the city in Modernist times, because I could basically only base that on secondary material, as I don't have enough time/knowledge to really give examples of other texts etc. However I'd still like to analyse the perception of the city in the text.

Do any of you have any ideas? It would be greatly appreciated! I'll give thumps up to everyone who contributes, if that is any motivation. :biggrin:

This sounds quite similar to the initial idea I had for my dissertation, although I wanted to look at the city across time, from renaissance to modernist. I was told, sensibly, to narrow it down! However, that doesn't mean to say in the end I didn't end up referring to texts outside my topic. I haven't done modernist literature in about a year, but from what I remember, a big theme was how they moved away from what came before. So maybe you could also touch upon (very briefly) other primary texts, such as John Gay's Trivia or something Victorian (sorry I can't think of any examples off the top of my head) and compare for similarities/differences and use that as a starting point before looking at the city in the modernist poems? Like a comment about changing perceptions before exploring the new perception in depth. I wouldn't worry about not knowing what to write at this stage, that will all come from the analysis, I guess that's the first thing you have to do.

I hope that's helpful!

Help - looking for ideas on a thesis paper on city poetry.

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