Title
Rhythm and Insubordination
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Approaches novels by Hemingway, Faulkner, DeLillo, and McCarthy through a lyric poetry lens, focusing on each author’s employment of polysyndeton, the repetitive use of coordinating conjunctions to achieve a variety of dramatic effects. Discusses Hemingway’s use of the rhetorical device in key passages of A Farewell to Arms to level traditional hierarchies and build emotional intensity. Concludes that Hemingway’s careful balancing of the protracted poetic structure within his iconic minimalist style enabled him to artistically and realistically explore the emotional polarities of love and war.
Published in
Lyrical Strategies: The Poetics of the Twentieth-Century American Novel
Date
2018
Pages
47-84
COinS
Citation
Owens-Murphy, Katie. “Rhythm and Insubordination.” In Lyrical Strategies: The Poetics of the Twentieth-Century American Novel, 47-84. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018.