Dance for the world is dead: Dance aesthetics in modern epics
Description
This study argues for the centrality of dance to the style and structure of three modern epics: H.D.'s Helen in Egypt, William Carlos Williams' Paterson and James Joyce's Ulysses. My critical approach is twofold: I examine how the modern epic is conceptualized through dance aesthetics, and I analyze how the performative motifs in the texts signify, through dance, issues of gender, race and sexuality. Stuart Gilbert asserts that The Dance of the Hours is an important structural device in Ulysses; however, the influence of dance on the epic been critically overlooked. Although Williams, a dance aficionado, cites Martha Graham as an inspiration for Paterson, the form in the epic, has not received much critical attention. The satyr is central to Williams' early poem Danse Russe as well as the much later Paterson. I argue that the structure of Paterson is a satyr drama and that the epic is, in fact, a performance. The figure of the dancer was one of H.D.'s poetic personas; in this regard, there is an inherent dancerly aesthetic in her body of work. In the epic, Helen identifies herself as a dancer and claims that she herself is the writing; thus, I assert that her movement is a privileged site I argue that the dance aesthetics and the recurrent dance motifs justify a performative reading of the epics; the field of performance studies provides the lens for the theoretical framework of my dissertation. I argue that the syncretic interaction between memory and physical movement in the odysseys comprises a performative space in which identities are reconstituted. In the epics, personal memory converges with the cultural memory of the genealogy of particular dance forms, and this convergence is the catalyst for kinesis/physical movement in the narratives. Through kinesis, the physical movement, the dances in the odysseys are enacted, for example, the Dance of the Hours in Ulysses. The performances are the impetus for metamorphoses in the narratives and these metamorphoses involve transformations of gender, race and sexuality. The transformations provide new insight into the gender dynamics in these modern epics