AustLit

'Following from Karl Popper's notion of 'subjectless' knowledge, this article argues that poetry, like the other arts and sciences can be construed as a distinct 'world'. This world is constituted by internal relations both in a structural and an intertextual sense. Utilising Yury Lotman's formalist-structuralist approach, the difference between an internal relation and an external relation is made clear through a close reading of John Kinsella's 'The Silo', where the antipastoral elements are shown to be in an external relation to it, whereas the gothic mode is in an internal relation. A close reading of Philip Salom's Keepers trilogy further explores the kind of knowledge possessed by poetry.' (Publication abstract)