“IN THE FAR DISTANCE”: Memories of the Medieval and Ghosts in Modern Poetry (Jack Spicer, Cole Swensen)

Abstract

This essay proposes a comparative reading of medieval texts and the modern poetry of Jack Spicer and Cole Swensen. It explores the places of destabilization in these literary works, to grasp the stakes of the medieval resurgence that is taking place there. To summarize, we can say that the Middle Ages are used here to fight three tyrannies that are usually seen as constitutive of the subject in classic views inherited by modernity: that of time; that of the subject; and finally the primeval importance of meaning.