The underworld descent in twentieth-century poetry
Subtitle: from Pound and Eliot to Heaney and Walcott
By: Michael Thurston.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9780230620469
Subjects: English poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism; American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Voyages to the otherworld in literature; Hell in literature
Description: "The hero's descent into the Underworld is not only one of the oldest stories in western literature, it is also one of the most often retold. Why do so many modern poets - British and American, black and white, male and female, from the metropole and from the margins - stage Underworld descents in their work? Through a series of contextualized close readings, this study traces the cultural work performed by modern deployments of the classical narrative. While some poets engage their literary forebears to exorcise anxiety and others use Hell to sharpen their cultural critique, most recent poets, including James Merrill, Derek Walcott, Tony Harrison, and Seamus Heaney, have found the Underworld descent to be a useful framework for addressing the claims of history and politics."--Jacket.
Table of contents: title: Declarations of interdependence : the necromantic confrontation with tradition; title: Katabasis as cultural critique; title: In Nekuia begins responsibility : little Gidding and the postwar necromantic tradition; title: James Merrill's Book of Ephraim; title: Derek Walcott's Omeros; title: Tony Harrison's v; title: Seamus Heaney's Station Island.