Erotic Reckonings explores the problem of tradition and authority in the lives and work of three pairs of twentieth-century American poets - Ezra Pound and H.D., Yvor Winters and Janet Lewis, and Louise Bogan and Theodore Roethke. Drawing on classical and feminist psychoanalytic theory, Thomas Simmons argues that mentor-apprentice relationships are inescapably erotic, though not necessarily sexual. Pound and Winters manifest profound conflicts between allegiance to a tradition of knowledge and allegiance to apprentices; both tend to master the apprentice, to bind her to a body of knowledge. In contrast, Bogan and Roethke display a different approach: wary of the value of a tradition of knowledge, Bogan insists that Roethke represent himself as a person of authority. She plays for him a role of sustained reciprocity, rather than of domination.
- ISBN10 0252021207
- ISBN13 9780252021206
- Publish Date 1 November 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 10 July 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Illinois Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 244
- Language English