‘Getting over our selves’: Elegy and rhetoric in Ted Hughes’sBirthday Lettersand Carrie Etter’sImagined Sons

Abstract

Critical analysis ofBirthday Lettersby Ted Hughes andImagined Sonsby Carrie Etter is illuminated by reading both texts against the rhetorical strategies and conventions of elegy.Birthday LettersandImagined Sonsare engaged in communicating strong feelings of grief following serious losses within lived experience, for which both construct first-person speakers. This article recognizes the presence of the conventions of elegy in both texts and suggests that despite thematic and structural similarities, there are significant differences in the ways the speakers in these texts are configured and how they address their audiences.