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The Contemporary Elegy in World Literature
Series: - DQR Studies in the Lyric, Volume: 1
- DQR Studies in Literature, Volume: 1
This volume navigates the entangled expressions of mourning across languages, cultures, and traditions, shedding light on the evolving shapes and discourses of contemporary elegy in world literature. By adopting a transnational approach, this collection offers a much needed conceptualization of what elegy has become today.
Contributors are Nick Admussen, Adele Bardazzi, Roberto Binetti, Emily Drumsta, Francesco Giusti, Roberto Gaudioso, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Karen Leeder, Brandon Menke, Jahan Ramazani, Rachel Elizabeth Robinson, David Sherman and Ivanna Sang Een Yi.
Contributors are Nick Admussen, Adele Bardazzi, Roberto Binetti, Emily Drumsta, Francesco Giusti, Roberto Gaudioso, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Karen Leeder, Brandon Menke, Jahan Ramazani, Rachel Elizabeth Robinson, David Sherman and Ivanna Sang Een Yi.
Adele Bardazzi, DPhil (Oxon) is Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at the University of Utrecht and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research delves into issues of form and interpretation, poetry and poetics, lyric theory, gender and women’s studies. Among her past and forthcoming publications are:
Eugenio Montale: A Poetics of Mourning (2022);
Elegy Today: Resistance, Revision, Re-Mapping (2023);
Weaving Media in Modern and Contemporary Italian Poetry (2023);
Conglomerates: Andrea Zanzotto’s Poetic Clusters;
Textile Poetics of Entanglement (Brill); and
The Poetics of Fabric. She is founder of the
Weaving Media Network, and co-founder of
Italian Poetry Today and
Non solo muse
Roberto Binetti, DPhil (Oxon), is Research Fellow at the University of Padua, working on a project on nuclear anxiety in 20th-century lyric poetry. His research focuses on modern and contemporary poetry, with an emphasis on the relationship between the lyric and cultural history. Among his past and forthcoming publications are: Elegy Today. Resistance, Revision; Re-Mapping (2023); Poetics of Becoming: Women’s Poetry in Italy’s Long Seventies; Conglomerates: Andrea Zanzotto’s Poetic Clusters; La domanda dell’inconscio: Lingua e vita interiore nella poesia di Amelia Rosselli e Andrea Zanzotto; and Anne Carson: letteratura liquida. He is co-founder of Italian Poetry Today and Non solo muse.
Jonathan Culler is Class of 1916 Professor Emeritus of English at Cornell University. His research is in the fields of structuralism, literary theory and literary criticism. He is the author of Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (1975) and Theory of the Lyric (2015).
Roberto Binetti, DPhil (Oxon), is Research Fellow at the University of Padua, working on a project on nuclear anxiety in 20th-century lyric poetry. His research focuses on modern and contemporary poetry, with an emphasis on the relationship between the lyric and cultural history. Among his past and forthcoming publications are: Elegy Today. Resistance, Revision; Re-Mapping (2023); Poetics of Becoming: Women’s Poetry in Italy’s Long Seventies; Conglomerates: Andrea Zanzotto’s Poetic Clusters; La domanda dell’inconscio: Lingua e vita interiore nella poesia di Amelia Rosselli e Andrea Zanzotto; and Anne Carson: letteratura liquida. He is co-founder of Italian Poetry Today and Non solo muse.
Jonathan Culler is Class of 1916 Professor Emeritus of English at Cornell University. His research is in the fields of structuralism, literary theory and literary criticism. He is the author of Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (1975) and Theory of the Lyric (2015).
"Is there more to elegy than consolation or its refusal? The essays that animate this exciting and timely collection invite us to think beyond the familiar binary of elegy and anti-elegy, revealing the many other types of labor mourning poems assume in our increasingly global world: embodiments of social justice, expressions of international solidarity, vehicles of democratization, exercises in shared empathy. An important and field-changing book."
- Diana Fuss, Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English, Princeton University.
"Situated at the threshold of life and death, the elegy maintains a universal pertinence across cultures. Its histories in many ways represent the histories of humanity. This volume offers invaluable insights into the history of the contemporary elegy in its diverse forms of expression. Its broad-ranging essays leave no doubt that there does indeed exist an ‘elegiac solidarity’ (Jahan Ramazani) among the manifold of elegiac genres in contemporary world literature."
- Robert Harrison, Emeritus Rosina-Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature, Stanford University.
- Diana Fuss, Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English, Princeton University.
"Situated at the threshold of life and death, the elegy maintains a universal pertinence across cultures. Its histories in many ways represent the histories of humanity. This volume offers invaluable insights into the history of the contemporary elegy in its diverse forms of expression. Its broad-ranging essays leave no doubt that there does indeed exist an ‘elegiac solidarity’ (Jahan Ramazani) among the manifold of elegiac genres in contemporary world literature."
- Robert Harrison, Emeritus Rosina-Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature, Stanford University.
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Contemporary Entangled Elegy
Adele Bardazzi, Roberto Binetti, and Jonathan Culler
1 The Elegiac Transnational
Chinese Poetry, Sutured Absence, World Literature
Nick Admussen
2 Impossible Elegies
Resisting the Paternal
Adele Bardazzi
3 Mourning Nature: The Elegiac Mode and the Not Yet Lost
Re-reading Juliana Spahr’s “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache”
Francesco Giusti
4 Elegiac Subjunctive, or Secular Variations on Posthumous Personhood
David Sherman
5 Shamanic Chant and Contemporary Korean Elegy
Kim Hyesoon’s “Autobiography of Death”
Ivanna Sang Een Yi
6 Self-Elegy and the Making of Lyric Communities
Roberto Binetti
7 Durs Grünbein’s Elegy for Dresden
Karen Leeder
8 Rec(h)ording Elegy
Transformative Mourning in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña
Rachel Elizabeth Robinson
9 The Poetics of Pain
Lament and Elegy in Modern Greek Literature
Gail Holst-Warhaft
10 Mourning Women
Two Modern Takes on Arabic Elegy
Emily Drumsta
11 Death as a Natural Presence and as a Monster
The Elegy in African Textual Traditions with a Focus on Swahili Verbal Art
Roberto Gaudioso
12 Resisting Annihilation
The AIDS Anthology Poem and Collective Melancholia
Brandon Menke
13 A Global Web of Elegies
Jahan Ramazani
Index
Introduction: Contemporary Entangled Elegy
Adele Bardazzi, Roberto Binetti, and Jonathan Culler
Part1 Resistance
1 The Elegiac Transnational
Chinese Poetry, Sutured Absence, World Literature
Nick Admussen
2 Impossible Elegies
Resisting the Paternal
Adele Bardazzi
3 Mourning Nature: The Elegiac Mode and the Not Yet Lost
Re-reading Juliana Spahr’s “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache”
Francesco Giusti
4 Elegiac Subjunctive, or Secular Variations on Posthumous Personhood
David Sherman
Part2 Revision
5 Shamanic Chant and Contemporary Korean Elegy
Kim Hyesoon’s “Autobiography of Death”
Ivanna Sang Een Yi
6 Self-Elegy and the Making of Lyric Communities
Roberto Binetti
7 Durs Grünbein’s Elegy for Dresden
Karen Leeder
8 Rec(h)ording Elegy
Transformative Mourning in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña
Rachel Elizabeth Robinson
Part3 Re-mapping
9 The Poetics of Pain
Lament and Elegy in Modern Greek Literature
Gail Holst-Warhaft
10 Mourning Women
Two Modern Takes on Arabic Elegy
Emily Drumsta
11 Death as a Natural Presence and as a Monster
The Elegy in African Textual Traditions with a Focus on Swahili Verbal Art
Roberto Gaudioso
12 Resisting Annihilation
The AIDS Anthology Poem and Collective Melancholia
Brandon Menke
13 A Global Web of Elegies
Jahan Ramazani
Index
This book is for all scholars, graduate and post-graduate studies, academic departments, and university libraries intested in Comparative Literature.