A Response to Robert Lecker's "Exegetical Blizzard" and Michael Taylor's "Snow Blindness"

A reply to Rober Lecker's and Michael Taylor's responses to Francis Zichy's original article "‘Each in his prison/Thinking of the key': Images of Confinement and Liberation in Margaret Avison.

"Each in his prison / Thinking of the key": Images of Confinement and Liberation in Margaret Avison

In Margaret Avison's poems, images of confinement and liberation are insistently present, and present in a special relation. The poet may be seen as working toward a vision in which this irony can be recognized; full recognition of the irony, that the individual is responsible for his/her own imprisonment, could make it possible to accept confinement as a necessary, salutary condition of self-definition. Poems discussed include "Snow," "Perspective," The Valiant Vacationist," and "Voluptuaries and Others.

Sharon Pollock's Portraits of the Artist

This essay is a study of Sharon Pollock's artist characters. Using concepts drawn from contemporary autobiography theory with Butler's theory of performativity, I examine three plays in detail—Blood Relations, Saucy Jack, and Moving Pictures—to show how Pollock develops an artist's power to produce identity, to articulate the meaning of a life in performance, and, in some instances, to resist those scriptings of life which limit or erase individuals. While I conclude with observations about these three plays, I also suggest that the paradigm Pollock explores through the artist character informs other of her plays and non-artist characters. Dans cet étude, on examine les portraits des artistes présentees par Sharon Pollock dans ses pièces, mais avec attention particulièr a Moving Pictures, qui raconte l'histoire de Nell Shipman, actrice et realisatrice. Pour creer la character de "Shipman," Pollock a utiliser l'autobiographie de Shipman et, dans mon analyse, j'applique les théories contemporaines d'autobiographics et performativity pour explorer comment Pollock monte l'enquete autobiographique de son "Shipman.