Abstract
Even before its publication in 1973, Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin was a controversial collection, and it has continued to be a focus of debate. The book’s subject matter is not the issue, since it is, as Lowell himself notes, “the common novel plot” of “one man, two women” (Dolphin 48). Essentially, the poems record Lowell’s difficult transition from one marriage to another, from marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick (called “Lizzie” in the poems) to Caroline Blackwood. The criticism, which, as the Ian Hamilton and Paul Mariani biographies reveal, enveloped friend and foe alike, polarized around two related issues. The first entailed the use of names of actual people (Caroline, Lizzie, and daughter Harriet). Not only were Lowell’s, Hardwick’s, and Blackwood’s friends and acquaintances to be privy to this marital drama, the wider reading audience was now to be allowed a window into the houses and bedrooms of the unofficial Poet Laureate.
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© 2014 Geoffrey Lindsay
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Lindsay, G. (2014). Robert Lowell’s “common novel plot”: Names, Naming, and Polyphony in The Dolphin. In: Scanlon, M., Engbers, C. (eds) Poetry and Dialogism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401281_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401281_5
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