Noami Shihab Nye’s Neo- and Post-Romanticism: The Mystique of Separate and Hybrid Landscapes

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to explore two important dimensions of Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry, her “neo”- and “post”-romanticism. We see these two distinct but interconnected dimensions, which have received no serious critical attention, as among her most original contributions to postmodern poetic discourse and as key to understanding much of her thought. By “neo”-romanticism, we refer to Nye's both echo and recreation of the thoughts and structures of traditional, 19th-century British and American Romanticism, especially with respect to the impact of nature on the self and the role of the imagination. By “post”-romanticism, we refer to the impact of daily, domestic, and mundane urban objects on the self. The interesting outcome of these two dimensions – paradoxically, at once opposed and parallel – is not duality but hybridity, which is what Postmodernism is in great part about. The study also implicitly reveals that, while Postmodernism and Romanticism often radically differ, they can at times be quite compatible.