Wholes and parts (all puns intended): the mereological vision of Richard Outram's poetic sequences

Jernigan, Amanda (2007) Wholes and parts (all puns intended): the mereological vision of Richard Outram's poetic sequences. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The work of poet Richard Outram (1930-2005) evinces an ongoing concern with part-whole relationships: those broadly classed, in philosophical terms, as "mereological." This thesis explores these relationships in three of Outram's poetic sequences: Hiram and Jenny (1988), Mogul Recollected (1993), and Benedict Abroad (1998). Each sequence elaborates a vision of unity-in-diversity, in which the qualities of wholeness and partness are not opposed but interdependent. The boundaries demarcating parts and wholes, temporal and spatial, are simultaneously maintained and made permeable. This "mereological" reading of Outram's work casts into relief various resonances between theme and form of which these sequences take constant account: the poetic sequence, like the world it depicts, exists in a state of unity-in-diversity. At the same time, this reading shows that Outram's mereological concerns are mortal concerns: deeply involved with a sense of the boundedness of human life, but also with a sense of its connectedness.

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