The aim of this PhD thesis is to examine the concepts of Nature and body in Walt Whitman and Angelos Sikelianos’ poetry, specifically in the works entitled Song of Myself (Whitman), Alafroiskiotos and Lyrika A' (Sikelianos). The PhD thesis is divided into six chapters including the Introduction, the Conclusion and the Bibliography. The first chapter aims to highlight three major theoretical streams through which the deep kinship among human and Nature is studied respectively. Ecocriticism is the main theoretical stream which studies the relationship of humans and Nature including flora, fauna, space, place etc. The terms of ecopoetics and zoopoetics are necessary to our literary approach of the terms Nature and body, represented and conceived as spatialities, including the acoustic patterns, the mechanics and functionalities of life forms. The discipline of ecopsychology is another field of research in which the main aspect is the spiritual and deep relationship of humans with Nature. The ecopsychological dimension of approaching the world being is ascribed to the terms of Transcendentalism where humans interpret their relationship with Nature spiritually. The third main stream of this part is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in which the notions of flesh of the world and chiasm are central in order to approach the dynamic core of the universe and its multiplicities through different and variable relationships which are ascribed and perceived in the name of universal flesh. The combination of these three main streams provides to us a new perspective of reading Whitman and Sikelianos’ works in order to define their biocosmic perception which has an ecophenomenological remark. In the following four chapters we adopt these three main epistemological streams into Whitman and Sikelianos’ texts by diving the translation of universal flesh’s rhetoric in both poets’ ecopoetics and zoopoetics. The presence of universal flesh can be found in both life and death’s zones by creating a multi-layered core of it which is varied from poet to poet. Whitman is more passionate regarding the embodied and lived experience of universal flesh through harmonical and disharmonic conjunctions with it. Considering on the passive perception of universal flesh by Sikelianos, here the poet is apt to the conflict aspect of the kinships which are held in both Nature and body. The impact of universal flesh in both life and death’s zones is a sign that universal flesh is alive everywhere and imposes a cyclic and endless presence in poets’ biocosmic perception. The last chapter aims to present a new reading horizon about the poets’ biocosmic perception which is an eco-phenomenological one. Eco-phenomenology raises the questions about the poetic in-habitation of subjectivity in Nature, the study of chiasm and the matter of universal flesh through the embodied and lived experience. In conclusion, Eco-phenomenology defines an eco-identity which is perceived here in terms of eco-citizenship against the irrationality and logocentrism.
Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή στηρίζεται μεθοδολογικά σε τρεις βασικούς θεωρητικούς άξονες, αυτούς της οικοκριτικής θεωρίας (ecocriticism), της οικοψυχολογίας (ecopsychology) και της Φαινομενολογίας του Maurice Merleau-Ponty, και τους αξιοποιεί συνδυαστικά στη συγκριτολογική ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση ποιητικών έργων του Walt Whitman και του Άγγελου Σικελιανού. Το ενδιαφέρον μας στρέφεται ειδικότερα στις συνθέσεις Song of Myself της συλλογής Leaves of Grass του πρώτου, στον Αλαφροΐσκιωτο, στις Ραψωδίες του Ιονίου όπως και σε όλη την πρώτη σειρά των Λυρικών ‒στον πρώτο και δεύτερο τόμο του Λυρικού Βίου, των ποιητικών δηλαδή Απάντων‒ του δεύτερου, και έχει στόχο να αναδείξει και να ερμηνεύσει την οικοφαινομενολογική πτυχή της βιοκοσμικής συνείδησης των δύο ποιητών· πτυχή που αποδίδει την καλλιτεχνική αντίληψη του Whitman και του Σικελιανού, φιλοσοφικά και αισθητικά εδραιωμένη στην άρση της αντίθεσης ανάμεσα στο αισθητό και στο διανοητικό.
National Documentation Centre (EKT)
