Muriel Rukeyser

Shira Wolosky (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 15 Dec 1913
Died 12 Feb 1980
Activity 1935-1980

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Biographer
Literary Critic/ Historian
Poet

Resources

Muriel Rukeyser is a distinctive, indeed dissident, voice in American letters, something reflected in the relative lack of commentary on her work. Emerging as a writer at the time the New Criticism was taking hold in the American academy, Rukeyser's work defied all its norms. The New Criticism idealized a poetry that was chiseled and iconic in form, a self-enclosed object of language referring to itself regardless of historical context, biographical reference, or cultural frame. Rukeyser, instead, saw her writing as a direct activism in cultural, political, and social concerns. She considered poetic language to be not a self-referring enclosure, but a permeable boundary with other kinds of discourses and social practices. She thus rejected the New Critical aesthetic, which in turn rejected her.

Rukeyser's definition not only of poetic language and its cultural role,...

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2622 words

Citation: Wolosky, Shira. "Muriel Rukeyser". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3884, accessed 09 June 2026.]