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Beyond Consolation : Death, Sexuality, and the Changing Shapes of Elegy / Melissa F. Zeiger.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Reading Women WritingPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©1997Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501711336
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 809.1/93548
LOC classification:
  • PN1389.Z45 1997
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Unwriting Orpheus: Swinburne's "Ave atque Vale" and the "New" Elegy -- 2. "Woman Much Missed": Writing Eurydice in Hardy's Poems of 1912-13 -- 3. The Fading of Orpheus: Women's Elegies -- 4. Avatars of Eurydice: John Berryman's Dream Songs -- 5. Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: AIDS Elegies -- 6. Against Elegies: Women's Breast Cancer Poems -- Afterword: Why Elegies? -- Notes -- Index
Summary: Using as her starting point the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Melissa F. Zeiger examines modern transformations of poetic elegy, particularly as they reflect historical changes in the politics of gender and sexuality. Although her focus is primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, the scope of her investigation is grand: from John Milton's "Lycidas" to very recently written AIDS and breast cancer elegies. Milton epitomized the traditional use of the Orpheus myth as an illustration of the female threat to masculine poetic prowess, focused on the beleaguered Orpheus. Zeiger documents the gradual inclusion of Eurydice, from the elegies of Algernon Charles Swinburne through the work of Thomas Hardy and John Berryman, re-examining the role of Eurydice, and the feminine more generally, in poetic production. Zeiger then considers women poets who challenge the assumptions of elegies written by men, sometimes identifying themselves with Eurydice. Among these poets are H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Bishop. Zeiger concludes with a discussion of elegies for victims of current plagues, explaining how poets mourning those lost to AIDS and breast cancer rewrite elegy in ways less repressive, sacrificial, or punitive than those of the Orphean tradition. Among the poets discussed are Essex Hemphill, Thom Gunn, Mark Doty, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Marilyn Hacker.
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Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501711336

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Unwriting Orpheus: Swinburne's "Ave atque Vale" and the "New" Elegy -- 2. "Woman Much Missed": Writing Eurydice in Hardy's Poems of 1912-13 -- 3. The Fading of Orpheus: Women's Elegies -- 4. Avatars of Eurydice: John Berryman's Dream Songs -- 5. Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: AIDS Elegies -- 6. Against Elegies: Women's Breast Cancer Poems -- Afterword: Why Elegies? -- Notes -- Index

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Using as her starting point the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Melissa F. Zeiger examines modern transformations of poetic elegy, particularly as they reflect historical changes in the politics of gender and sexuality. Although her focus is primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, the scope of her investigation is grand: from John Milton's "Lycidas" to very recently written AIDS and breast cancer elegies. Milton epitomized the traditional use of the Orpheus myth as an illustration of the female threat to masculine poetic prowess, focused on the beleaguered Orpheus. Zeiger documents the gradual inclusion of Eurydice, from the elegies of Algernon Charles Swinburne through the work of Thomas Hardy and John Berryman, re-examining the role of Eurydice, and the feminine more generally, in poetic production. Zeiger then considers women poets who challenge the assumptions of elegies written by men, sometimes identifying themselves with Eurydice. Among these poets are H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Bishop. Zeiger concludes with a discussion of elegies for victims of current plagues, explaining how poets mourning those lost to AIDS and breast cancer rewrite elegy in ways less repressive, sacrificial, or punitive than those of the Orphean tradition. Among the poets discussed are Essex Hemphill, Thom Gunn, Mark Doty, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Marilyn Hacker.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)