TY - JOUR
T1 - “Provocative propinquity”
T2 - Paul Muldoon and Edward Lear
AU - Alonso, Alex
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - As writers and wanderers, Edward Lear and Paul Muldoon make an oddly believable couple. Both develop an aesthetic that combines comedy and grotesquery, the botanical and the bestial, and both delight in pushing the whims of their imagination beyond the standards of poetic decorum. Their poems are full of departures and returns, though Lear’s voyages are as likely to arrive against impossible odds as Muldoon’s are to disappear in transit. Most importantly, both are writers committed to evocations of childhood, and to the rich formal pleasures and patterns particularly associated with children and the childlike. This article traces the legacy of Lear's nonsense writing in Muldoon's verse, and provides a glimpse of the range of poetry Lear’s work has helped make possible.
AB - As writers and wanderers, Edward Lear and Paul Muldoon make an oddly believable couple. Both develop an aesthetic that combines comedy and grotesquery, the botanical and the bestial, and both delight in pushing the whims of their imagination beyond the standards of poetic decorum. Their poems are full of departures and returns, though Lear’s voyages are as likely to arrive against impossible odds as Muldoon’s are to disappear in transit. Most importantly, both are writers committed to evocations of childhood, and to the rich formal pleasures and patterns particularly associated with children and the childlike. This article traces the legacy of Lear's nonsense writing in Muldoon's verse, and provides a glimpse of the range of poetry Lear’s work has helped make possible.
KW - Paul Muldoon
KW - Edward Lear
KW - Poetry
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095695993&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1353/vp.2020.0010
DO - 10.1353/vp.2020.0010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85095695993
VL - 58
SP - 169
EP - 185
JO - Victorian Poetry
JF - Victorian Poetry
SN - 0042-5206
IS - 2
ER -