Abstract
<jats:p>The paper is focused on the study of the erasure technique as a strategy of poetic transformation in the evolution of the American sonnet of the postmodern era. The paper reveals the specifics of the reinterpretation of the canonical sonnet form within postmodern poetics, characterized by the deconstruction of traditional structures, intertextuality and intense experiments with the architectonics of speech material. It is determined that erasure functions as a special way of creating a new text by reducing the already existing one, as a result of this process a poetic text with fundamentally new semantic and compositional characteristics is formed. It has been established that the use of the erasure technique contributes to the transformation of the sonnet from a strictly regulated form into an open text model with fragmentation, lacunarity, and the visual-architectural organization of the page playing an important role in it. Particular attention has been paid to the analysis of the poetic practices of Jen Berwin, in particular her book Nets, which is an artistic reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s sonnets by means of their partial erasure in the form of dimming of the original text. It has been revealed that the reduction of the text has resulted in the palimpsest effect, which ensures the simultaneous presence of the canonical source and the new artistic message. It has been proven that the erasure technique performs the intertextual, semantic and visualarchitectural functions, forming a new type of poetic structure, distinctive of postmodern literature. It has been concluded that the use of the erasure technique as an artistic strategy is an important factor in the evolution of the American sonnet, which testifies to the ability of the traditional form to adapt in the postmodern cultural context.</jats:p>