scholarly journals "Perimeters of Grief": Elegy in and out of Bounds in Fred D'Aguiar's Memorial Poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourdes López-Ropero
Keyword(s):  
Continental Shelf ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Virginia Tech ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Us History ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
The Dead

While Fred D’Aguiar’s preoccupation with acknowledging the dead and honoring their memory gives his work an idiosyncratic elegiac quality, it is with the publication of the poetic sequence “Elegies”, from the collection Continental Shelf (2009), that the author overtly pitches himself in the traditional terrain of the elegy as a poetic genre. This sequence, a response to the Virginia Tech shootings (April 16, 2007), the deadliest gun rampage in US history to date, invites critical attention not only because it remains critically unexamined, but also because through its title it presents itself as an elegy when an anti-elegiac turn has been identified in modern poetry. This paper will explore D’Aguiar’s intervention in the debate surrounding elegy’s contemporary function as a genre which oscillates between the poles of melancholia and consolation, thus contributing to shaping the contours of an ancient but conflicted poetic form for the 21st century. I will be arguing that D’Aguiar’s poem suggests that for elegy to serve the troubled present it may benefit from the cultivation of an unembarrassed attachment to the deceased, from avoiding depoliticizing tragedy and from the exposure of its socio-historical underpinnings. In sum, it should be open to engaging with such critical issues as the struggles of collective memory, or the turning of grief into mass-mediated spectacle.

The Origin and Form of Aeolic Verse

1909 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
John Williams White
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
Greek Poetry

The Aeolic dimeter and trimeter constitute so considerable a part of Greek lyric and dramatic poetry that the correct apprehension of their form is a matter of great moment. The Greek metricians comprehended this rightly, in the main, but in the first half of the nineteenth century the doctrine of these learned men was supplanted by a new theory that attempted to apply the principles that underlie modern poetry to the explanation of the undoubtedly complex rhythm of these clauses. Many scholars persistently maintain this theory. It is not difficult to discover why it was invented (it is absolutely new) and why it remains attractive. That the quantitative rhythms and metres of Greek poetry should seem complicated to men whose language is accentual is inevitable, whereas modern metres and rhythms are notoriously simple. The limitations imposed upon poetic form by accentual speech are extreme. No modern poet, for example, has attempted Ionic or Cretic measures. Again Greek music was simple, and both music and dance were under the control of the singers, but modern music is a complex art, and casts language in an iron mould. Nevertheless musical expression must be the basis of comparison, so far as we allow ourselves to institute it, between ancient and modern rhythms. The attempt to conform Greek lyrics to the elementary—and uncertain—rhythms of modern poetry that is merely read or recited implies a fundamental misconception of relations. Greek lyrics were melic. Agathon, in the Thesmophoriazusae, sings as he composes. These Greek songs were never intended to be read by anybody, Greek or barbarian.

The image of a modern shaman. A literary example of Ida Brzezińska

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Angelika Moskal
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The shaman figure is most often associated with primitive communities, inhabiting, among others Siberia. The shaman plays one of the most important roles in them - he is an intermediary between the world of people and the world of spirits. Responds to, among others for the safe passage of souls to the other side and protects her from evil spirits. However, is there room for representatives of this institution in contemporary Polish popular literature? How would they find themselves in the 21st century? The article aims to show the interpretation of the shaman on the example of Ida Brzezińska, the heroine of the books of Martyna Raduchowska. I intend to introduce the role and functions of the „shaman from the dead”, juxtaposing the way Ida works (including reading sleepy margins from a rather unusual dream catcher, carrying out souls and the consequences that await in the event of failure or making contact with the dead) with the methods described by scholars shamans. The purpose of the work is to show how much Raduchowska tried to adapt shamanism in her work by modernizing it, and how many elements she added from herself to make the story more attractive.

VIII.—The Nibelungenlied and Sage in Modern Poetry

PMLA ◽  
1896 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-257
Author(s):  
Gustav Gruener
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Complete Agreement ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Personal Opinion

In an article, entitled Nibelungensage und Nibelungendichtungen, which appeared in the Preussische Jahrbücher a little over a year ago (October, 1894), Dr. A. Schmidt, after a summary of the entire Nibelungensage and a comparison of this Sage with the form it assumes in the Nibelungenlied, makes the following statement: “Though it would be madness after Homer to reconstruct anew the Iliad and Odyssey in poetic form, after the mediaeval author it is really a religious duty of German poets who have the interests of their nation at heart to recast into higher forms the imperfectly coined Nibelungen treasure.” In these words the essayist expresses not merely a personal opinion, but echoes the sentiments of many other German critics, and above all of over forty authors who, with over fifty different productions in drama and epic poetry, have tried to recast into ‘higher forms’ the Nibelungensage as a whole or in part. This large number of attempts includes three or four dramatic sketches, but does not include the ‘lower forms’ of lyric and ballad poetry, or of prose narrative. After the clear and thorough discussion of Nibelungen dramas by Professor Carl Weitbrecht, it might seem unnecessary to discuss this part of the general subject any further, but there are certain aspects of this question which he has not touched upon which it is the purpose of this paper to consider; and, while there is complete agreement with the views advanced by Prof. Weitbrecht, yet the attempt will be made to show that his conclusions do not warrant the same approval.

scholarly journals The object of memory and the memory of the object: refugee crisis in the news on September 2nd 2015.

2017 ◽  
pp. 221-231
Author(s):  
Rooney F. Pinto ◽  
Isabel Maria Freitas Valente ◽  
Maria João Guia
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Object Memory ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Impact

This article aims to contribute on reflecting about the strict relation between an object (an image) and the memory, particularly regarding the memory in the news on September 2nd 2015 about the refugee crisis. Every year, Porto Editora (a Portuguese press company) holds a survey with ten words in order to elect the word of the year, and, for 2015, the elected one was “Refugees” (Palavra do Ano, 2015); this would be one more evidence of the impact of this issue in the news. The photo of a dead Syrian child on a beach in Turkey has become one of the most striking images of the refugee crisis in 2015. Curiously, Muerte a las puertas del paraíso (Death on paradise’s gates) was the headline exactly fifteen years ago, on September 2nd 2000, when photojournalist Javier Bauluz caught the image of a dead immigrant who tried to cross illegally, facing down the sand on a beach in Spain. In both cases, could we say the image overcomes the news? Which one is to be considered the object of the memory: the refugee crisis itself or the image of the dead Syrian child as an icon of this crisis? The theoretical framework stands on a threefold argument: 1. Object, memory and discourse; 2. The memory of the news; 3. Europe, migration and refugee crisis. Finally, two interviews were undertaken (as part of the pilot study) in order to verify if the memory of the object were sufficient enough to turn it into the object of the memory, as well as, whether one’s memory were somehow relevant to establish a collective memory.

Cinque zoom sul Cairo. I progetti attuati e quelli in via di attuazione

TERRITORIO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Maddalena Falletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Town ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

- The article considers five cases, the Sixth of October new town, the City of the Dead, the Zabbaleen neighbourhood, the Al Azhar park and finally the Nile Tower project by Zaha Hadid to give a review of current tendencies in the transformation of urban Cairo, looking at critical issues, the methodologies commonly employed and the large scale consequences. Although they appear very different, the cases reveal a common matrix and respond to an approach to the management of space which seems to move towards the consolidation of a policy of social exclusion.

scholarly journals Keening the Dead: Ancient History or a Ritual for Today?

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Mc Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Society Today

In his 1909 work ‘Rites De Passage’, Arnold van Gennep acknowledges that a ritual often contains ‘rites within rites’. So, it was with the ancient ritual of the Irish wake, at the center of which was another ritual, that of the keen, the Irish funeral lament. The past tense is used tentatively here, as in this article the author explores the resilience of the ritual and how, rather than becoming extinct, the keen seems to spend periods of time underground before erupting again in a new form, attuning itself to a more contemporaneous social situation. Drawing on ethnographic and bibliographic research undertaken between 2010 and 2018, the author traces some of the history of the keen within the ritual of the Irish wake and funeral and gives instances of how it is being reconfigured in the 21st century. This continuation of the ritual, albeit in a new format, seems to speak to a deep emotional and spiritual need that may not be satisfied by more conventional religion in Ireland. Finally, the author considers the keen’s relevance and place in Irish society today.

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