Contemporary Male Elegy

摘要

Recent elegiac criticism has commonly distinguished the ways in which male and female poets mourn their dead. In the work of Celeste M. Schenck and Melissa F. Zeiger, male elegy's purpose is to distance the dead in a determined Oedipal progression, and to assert the potency of the survivor, while female poets contest or reject such a pattern in favour of enduring contact. By examining elegies by Michael Longley, Paul Durcan and Paul Muldoon, amongst others, this essay tests whether this outline is representative of the experience of contemporary male elegists, examining how their work challenges such an emotionally and aesthetically limiting conception of their mourning experience. These elegies often centre on tropes of deference and guilt, inadequacy and continued attachment, where poets continue to mourn and draw comfort from their forebears. In this way the poems suggest a less restrictive taxonomy of male mourning in contemporary elegy than that offered by Schenck and Zeiger.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2011.604918