에드윈 앨링턴 로빈슨 시 연구: 틸베리 타운 사람들은 왜 좌절하는가?

Abstract

Edwin Arlington Robinson is well known for his style of "the old way of being new." He usually worked in the traditional poetic form, but this poetry showed a modern sense of experiences. Many of his poems are a study of the residents of Tilbury Town, an imaginary community which Robinson created based on his home town. Although he did not study Freud or Jung, his poems sometimes show his keen psychological probing that revealed the dark side of the human soul. People in Tilbury Town are wrapt in the rapid change of social and economical structures, and the ontological limit. And the town is filled with failure, alienation, solitude, deprivation, and loss. It also serves as a metaphor for dislocation and uprootedness. The residents of the town feel frustrated and out of place, but they seldom know where they have to find alternatives. Thus, they are required to make the best of bad things and also to accept what they are, although they are aware that what they might have been is the best. While a few people are able to endure themselves, others are forced to choose antisocial behaviors such as suicide or isolating themselves into themselves. And the ontological fear that all living things in the world are supposed to fade into oblivion also leads people to (metaphysical) loneliness, despair, and frustration. In Robinson's poetry, the social aspect and the ontological aspect are combined to make Tilbury Town much gloomier.