"Your Tiny White Vests, Unworn": Contemporary Elegies of Maternal Loss

IF 0.2 4区 文学 0 LITERATURE LITERATURE AND MEDICINE Pub Date : 2024-03-12 DOI:10.1353/lm.2023.a921568
Anne Whitehead
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Abstract

Abstract:

This essay asks whether poetry can articulate the experience of maternal loss, paying particular attention to questions of form. Focusing on two British poetry collections, Rebecca Goss's Her Birth (2013) and Karen McCarthy Woolf's An Aviary of Small Birds (2014), I argue that the contemporary elegy is currently being reshaped to explore the grief of losing a baby, and to bear witness to a life briefly lived. Drawing on Caroline Levine's emphasis on the affordances of form, the essay first examines these elegies' aural qualities thorugh the motif of the echo. Next I attend to the shaping of the poems, and how their word placement gives weight to the experience of baby loss. Finally, I consider how the modes of address at the end of the two collections negotiate the possibility of moving forward.

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"你的小白马甲,未曾穿过":当代丧失母亲的哀歌
摘要:本文提出了诗歌能否表达丧失母性的体验这一问题,尤其关注形式问题。通过对丽贝卡-戈斯(Rebecca Goss)的《她的诞生》(2013年)和凯伦-麦卡锡-伍尔夫(Karen McCarthy Woolf)的《小鸟的鸟舍》(2014年)这两部英国诗集的研究,我认为当代挽歌正在被重新塑造,以探讨失去婴儿的悲痛,并见证短暂的生命。文章借鉴了卡罗琳-莱文(Caroline Levine)对形式承受能力的强调,首先通过回声主题考察了这些挽歌的听觉特质。接下来,我将关注诗歌的塑造,以及它们的用词是如何加重失去婴儿的痛苦的。最后,我将探讨这两部诗集结尾处的称呼方式是如何商讨向前迈进的可能性的。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
0.00%
发文量
20
期刊介绍: Literature and Medicine is a journal devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. Issues of illness, health, medical science, violence, and the body are examined through literary and cultural texts. Our readership includes scholars of literature, history, and critical theory, as well as health professionals.
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