From Langston Hughes's lynch poems to Sylvia Plath's father elegies, modern poetry has tried to find a language of mourning in an age of mass death, religious doubt and forgotten ritual. For this reason, Jahan Ramazani argues, the elegy, one of the most ancient of poetic genres, has remained one of the most vital to modern poets. Through readings of elegies, self-elegies, war poems and the blues, Ramazani aims to enrich our critical understanding of a wide range of poets, including Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney. He also interprets the signal contributions to the American family elegy of Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Adrienne Rich, Michael Harper and Amy Clampitt. Finally, he suggests analogies between the elegy and other kinds of contemporary mourning art - in particular, the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Grounded in genre theory and in the psychoanalysis of mourning, Ramazani's readings also draw on various historical, formal and feminist critical approaches. This book is intended for anyone concerned with the psychology of mourning or the history of modern poetry.
| ISBN: | 9780226703404 |
| Publication date: | 28th February 2024 |
| Author: | Jahan Ramazani |
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press an imprint of The University of Chicago Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 436 pages |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: poetry and poets Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Sociology: death and dying |