Masters Theses
Date of Award
5-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Major
English
Major Professor
Benjamin Lee
Committee Members
Allen Dunn, Lisi Schoenbach
Abstract
This thesis describes and analyzes the postmodern comedy of New York School poet, Kenneth Koch and discusses the changes this comedy underwent throughout his lengthy career. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter I explains the aesthetic of the New York School of poets as contrasted to the dominant New Critical compositional aesthetic embodied by poets such as Robert Lowell in the mid-century United States. Chapter II develops Koch’s comedy as expressing an emergent postmodernism. Chapter III discusses the various aspects of Koch’s comedy, sampling poems from across his career. Chapter IV traces the development and maturity of Koch’s comedy from the 1960s until his death in 2002.
Recommended Citation
Nichols, John Campbell, "Kenneth Koch's Postmodern Comedy Revisited. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2015.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/3338
Included in
American Literature Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons