Abstract

Within the context of Christopher Dewdney's sociopoetic critique of Western culture, this study examines the recurrent trope of the "glass machinery" in Dewdney's highly symbolic 1983 collection of poetry, prose, and visual art, Predators of the Adoration: Selected Poems 1972-82 . Employing a strategy of repetition, association, and layering, Dewdney explores the workings of "the glass machinery," a complex, all-encompassing, metaphorical symbolic system that imitatively represents the very perceptual paradigm that Dewdney "indignantly" critiques and "shatters." Though a significant trope throughout his work, the glass machinery recurs most comprehensively in Predators ; thus, this study, while focused on Predators , also frequently refers to Dewdney's other "incestuous" books, which illumine and explain one another. Three equally intriguing and interconnected tropes reveal the glass machinery's nature, workings, and purpose, which renders them essential to any discussion of the glass machinery: the Christ archetype, the concretion, and Remote Control. This study thus contains three chapters: one on the glass machinery, one on the Christ archetype, and one on both the concretion mid Remote Control. Given the complexity of Dewdney's work and the shortage of secondary sources, I provide, as a basis for further work, a general overview of each trope within the context of the glass machinery, as well as within the context of Dewdney's critique of what he considers to be the dominant "perceptual paradigm" in Western culture.