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“Outdoor Game”: The Invention of Boundary in Robert Frost’s Poetry
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Abstract
Being one of the most renowned American poets, Robert Frost has paid much attention to the interplay between humans and nature, and this interplay usually takes place at a boundary – a wall, a fence, or a house. To examine the human-nature relationship and respond to the existing studies, the article delves into the theme of boundary in Frost’s poetry through close reading of Frost’s poems, interviews, and notes. Because of the development of natural science in Frost’s time, the image of landscape undergoes metamorphosis, switching from a mirroring of the human spirit to a living entity with agency. Therefore, nature is depicted as a counterpart of human beings with an attempt to cross over limits. Nevertheless, Frost emphasizes on coexistence and interdependence between two realms by deliberately leaving the boundary unsettled. Moreover, figures in Frost’s poetry bear two opposite impulses: to destroy and recreate limits, which reveals the floating and playful nature of boundaries; in this regard, the images of houses, walls, and fences are a metaphor for the contradictory human attributes. The article further argues that the feeling of limits reappears in poems displaying emptiness. In Frost’s poetry, a boundary is regarded as a protection both physically and mentally, yet it fails in a state of consolation.
Keywords
Robert Frost, poetry, nature, boundary
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Cite this article
Fan,S. (2023). “Outdoor Game”: The Invention of Boundary in Robert Frost’s Poetry. Communications in Humanities Research,20,13-18.
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Volume title: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
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