A poetics of engagement in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime

Abstract

Ragtime (1985 [1975]) is contextualised among Doctorow's other 1970s novels as an attempt to challenge received ideas about his country's past. The novel's formal strategy for expressing Doctorow's radical critique of modem American experience- what he calls 'a poetics of engagement' - is examined through close attention to the formal and linguistic handling of speech. Three key passages of dialogue are quoted at length and analysed for what they reveal of the social - and, hence, ideological- embeddedness of utterances and those who speak them. The interdependence of private and public discourse is related to issues of reproduction, repetition and inescapability which the novel also addresses. Finally, it is argued that Doctorow's unflinching engagement with negative socio-linguistic forces culminates in a courageous admission of political paralysis.