Abstract:
This thesis presents a manuscript of poems and creative nonfiction essays, Horse Crazy Girls:
Adventures and Maturing in the American West, which is contextualized in the discussion
presented by a critical foreword. The foreword analyzes the narratology of two antithetical
nonfiction books by Mary Karr and Roxane Gay written more than two decades apart as well as
confessional works from Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, and Kim Addonizio according to the ways
these diverse works demonstrate characteristics of Aristotelian tragic structure. The Aristotelian
traits of hamartia and catharsis exhibit themselves in modern day nondramatic works, which
readers do not usually consider when discussing tragic structure or ideas. The foreword
maintains that using both hamartian narratology and homodiegetic narratology offers the
authors purgation and catharsis.
Works of creative nonfiction are appropriately analyzed in these terms because these
works not only present the challenges and misfortunes the authors experience in their lifetimes
but also seek to discover and expose character flaws in order to achieve some form of reflective
insight or catharsis. In works such as Mary Karr’s Liars Club and Roxane Gay’s Hunger, the
confessional tones help the reader recognize the flaw (hamartia) and a character or character’s
catharsis of emotions associated with realizing and expressing their own realization of that flaw
either in themselves, a spouse, or a parental figure.
The foreword further maintains that poets also express themselves through hamartic and
homodiegetic narratologies. Sylvia Plath’s journals and poem “Daddy” exhibit these tendencies,
as do Sharon Olds’s “I Go Back to May 1937” and Kim Addonizio’s “The First Line is the
Deepest.” In considering these works and the original creative manuscript, the foreword posits
that writers who confess personal tragedy or communicate angst during their writings exhibit
relief for unburdening themselves of secrets kept most of their lives.
