Sunday, July 10, 2016

What are the main arguments in Russel McDougall's paper "Music, Body, and the Torture of Articulation in Derek Walcott's 'Sainte Lucie'"?

Russell McDougall’s primary goal, through his paper, seems to compare Derek Walcott’s poetry to the physical sensation of music and rhythm, like dance and theatre. The paper specifically outlines the musicality of Walcott’s wordings and emotional messages in the poem “Sainte Lucie,” what McDougall describes as a “drama of consciousness.” He invites the reader into Wolcott’s poetry on a quest to indulge the senses, by having faith in the language and imagination of sound and visualization through the words of the poem. Arguments for McDougall’s thesis include the many references in the poem to sensations, such as physical movements, which remind us of our own physicality and our own movements. There are many references also of scenes and sounds, some of which may also trigger our own memories—for example, colors, lights, and shadows moving and the sounds of horns, water, and birds. McDougall describes concepts, like the darkness of despair and nakedness, as hues in the emotional painting of Walcott’s language. The bright and dark diatonic images of the physical poem/play are metaphorical for our consciousness.
https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/hass/rmcdouga

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