Poetics of Loss: The Elegy in Andrew Motion's Poetry

Lempe K (2014)


Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Authored book, Monography

Publication year: 2014

Publisher: LIT

Series: Reihe: Erlanger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik

City/Town: Münster

Book Volume: 15

Abstract


With the removal of death from the public sphere, mourning has become a private matter. At the same time, particularly in poetry, the trend is reversed. An intensely elegiac quality and a focus on absence, death and loss can be observed in contemporary Anglophone poetry.

This study shows the poetry of Andrew Motion in the context of the contemporary elegy, a genre which is at a crossroads between the anti-consolatory refusal to mourn, the inability to move past grief, and the strong wish for redemption from grief. Motion's poetry, which mainly deals with pre-emptive attempts to cope with loss, can be seen as a typical example for the contemporary melancholy mood in poetry.

Additional Organisation(s)

How to cite

APA:

Lempe, K. (2014). Poetics of Loss: The Elegy in Andrew Motion's Poetry. Münster: LIT.

MLA:

Lempe, Katharina. Poetics of Loss: The Elegy in Andrew Motion's Poetry. Münster: LIT, 2014.

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