Orotating parafundities: reading Hopkins, Dickinson, Murray, and Carson autistically

Callanan, Andreae (2023) Orotating parafundities: reading Hopkins, Dickinson, Murray, and Carson autistically. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Autistic people use and understand language differently than do non-autistic people; this principle is chief among diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and yet little attention has been paid to this phenomenon as it pertains to autistic engagement with literature. This thesis examines the generative potential of what I have termed “autistic close reading” to unlock new interpretations of work by four poets whose writing has been considered unusual, impenetrable, perplexing, and weird: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Les Murray (1938-2019), and Anne Carson (1950-). Accepting the premise that autistic reading experiences are, like many autistic experiences, “particular and peculiar,” I look at how autistic cognitive style, sensory responsiveness, communication differences, and social alterity work to create unique relationships between autistic readers and the literary material we enjoy. Engaging a taxonomy of autistic language usage developed by theorist Julia Miele Rodas, I examine the distinct overlap between autistic expression and formal poetic technique, and I explore potential implications of this overlap in terms of language use and language reception by autistic people. Drawing on work by Jack Halberstam, M. Remi Yergeau, Ralph John Savarese, and Nick Walker, this thesis takes a neuroqueer and neurocosmopolitan approach to Hopkins, Dickinson, Murray, and Carson as cultural figures, and proposes new contexts to elucidate their poems and projects. The dissertation is bracketed by first-person commentary on my own relationship to language as an autistic poet, and on my experiences as an autistic researcher. As my title indicates, this thesis is as much about the act of reading while autistic as it is about the critical assertions engendered by such an act.

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