eprintid: 1427685 rev_number: 36 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/01/42/76/85 datestamp: 2014-09-26 11:21:44 lastmod: 2019-10-19 08:02:17 status_changed: 2014-09-26 11:21:44 type: thesis metadata_visibility: show item_issues_count: 0 creators_name: Tucker, RLG title: William Carlos Williams in the 1930s ispublished: unpub divisions: A01 divisions: B03 keywords: William Carlos Williams, 1930s, modernism, Louis Zukofsky, Nathanael West, Objectivism, Proletarian Literature, Localism, Great Depression, New Deal, Nativism, Contact abstract: The subject of this thesis is William Carlos Williams and the circle of writers around him in the 1930s. During this decade Williams was a key figure in the formation of an alternative left-wing American canon, and active in a group that included Nathanael West, Louis Zukofsky and Kenneth Burke. This thesis explores the political and aesthetic grounds on which that canon was constructed. The assumption that Williams was already a successful writer after Spring and All (1923) has often led to a disproportionate emphasis on his poetry and the ‘modernist’ aspects of his aesthetics. This thesis makes the case for the significance of Williams’ 1930s prose writings in the growth of the Proletarian Literature movement, and challenges the assumption that ‘Marxist’ literature of the 1930s was at odds with ‘modernist’ literature of the 1920s. I investigate the key concepts of Williams’ own aesthetic philosophy, ‘Objectivism,’ ‘Pragmatism,’ ‘Contact,’ and ‘Localism,’ and show how these concepts became politicized during the 1930s. By exploring the relationship between art and politics, and the ways in which Williams was radicalized by the Great Depression, this thesis attempts to expand critical notions of ‘radicalism’ to include a broader New Deal alliance between traditional democratic liberalism and Marxist economic determinism. Focusing on concepts of ‘Nativism’ and ‘Americanism,’ this thesis also charts America’s burgeoning cultural nationalism during the 1930s, and demonstrates how America’s founding values were challenged by political, economic and social upheaval in the wake of the Depression. By locating Williams’ desire for radical economic change within the context of the Jeffersonian movement, I demonstrate how a historical assessment of America’s past led Williams and the writers mentioned above to question America’s attitudes towards individualism, the redistribution of wealth, the forces of corruption and plutocracy, and the effectiveness of democracy to bring about social justice. date: 2014-04-28 vfaculties: VARTS oa_status: green full_text_type: other thesis_class: doctoral_open language: eng thesis_view: UCL_Thesis dart: DART-Europe primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_source: Manually entered elements_id: 942421 lyricists_name: Tucker, Robert lyricists_id: RTUCK80 full_text_status: public pagerange: ? - ? pages: 343 institution: UCL (University College London) department: English thesis_type: Doctoral citation: Tucker, RLG; (2014) William Carlos Williams in the 1930s. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London). Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1427685/2/William%20Carlos%20Williams%20in%20the%201930s.pdf