Date of Award
Fall 12-2018
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Katherine Cochran
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Monika Gehlawat
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Emily Stanback
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Abstract
This thesis examines Fred Chappell’s virtually overlooked collection of poetry Family Gathering (2000), and how the poems operate within the mode of the grotesque. I argue that the poems illuminate both the southern grotesque and Roland Barthes’s theory of photography’s Operator, Spectator, and Spectrum. I address Family Gathering as a family photo album full of still shots, snapshots, and even selfies, which illumines how Chappell’s use of the grotesque in this collection derives more from its original association with visual arts rather than only depicting the grotesque typically associated with characteristics deemed explicitly shocking or terrifying. I argue that reading Chappell’s poems as photographs with grotesque qualities allows us to consider multiple ways Chappell draws on various definitions of the grotesque, informed by Barthes’s theory of photography. Finally, I argue that the collection allows us to consider the grotesque as a spectrum that exists simultaneously alongside what we might call normal.
Copyright
2018, Jonathan Moore
Recommended Citation
Moore, Jonathan, "The Return of the Dead: Resurrecting Chappell's Family Gathering" (2018). Master's Theses. 597.
https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/597
Included in
American Literature Commons, Appalachian Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Photography Commons, Poetry Commons