Paper Summary:

This paper examines Anne Carson's prose poem "The Glass Essay" in terms of the post-modern condition, which reduces human experience to the self and fragmented meanings, to loneliness and senselessness. It focuses on particular events in the poem, such as Carson's descriptions of her mother and a past love affair, and her insights into the mind of Emily Bronte. The paper ends by pointing out that, though the poem is written in the post-modern form and tradition, its conclusion presents a not so post-modern self but rather a very human, heartening, and timeless self.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
A Past Love Affair
An Aging Mother
On Emily Bronte
The Post-modern Self
Concluding Remarks

From the Paper:

"Throughout "The Glass Essay" Carson describes the profound loneliness that has always been part of human experience known to some individuals more than others and that is seen as a strong part of the postmodern personality. The world is thought to have changed with a great loss of faith in authorities, institutions or ideas of art or value that leave many people feeling they have no bearings, or that life is only absurd and senseless. People are believed to be more cut off from one another than was true in the past and with the resulting loneliness involving only the self as a reliable reality. It may be said that postmodern ideas of the self stress this extreme individuality and its results, no past grouping or category seeming to have relevance."

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